No, Mother.

When I first came out to my mother - and to me, coming out meant coming out to my mother - this woman I’d heard cry only from behind closed doors, choked tears on the other end of the phone and said, “Your life is going to be so hard, and life is hard enough.”

I was 19 years old. 

Now 31 years later at the cusp of 50, older than she was then, I can fully and truthfully respond, NO, MOTHER. 

No, mother. Being gay wasn’t hard; what’s hard is oppression. What’s hard is being denied history. Not knowing for instance that there were queer kings and queens and emperors - still memorialized on coins - women that rode into battle and married wives. Men who dressed in gowns and wore makeup and called themselves “husband” to the man they held dear yet STILL ran an empire. 

What’s hard is not knowing about the ancient sarcophagi containing some of the First People, male remains buried with tender female objects because these were the things treasured in life. It was hard to grow up in the South thinking I was the only one, all the while this history existed untold, the first people, gender-fluid, but still honored by their tribe, that was hard. It was difficult struggling inside with shame and guilt, shunned by classmates and threatened with damnation, all because I’d fallen in love with my friend, fell in love the way all teenagers do - an open, dazed stumble like falling into flowers – surviving that was hard. 

Being gay wasn’t hard.  It was being alone.  

Mother, the hard was you calling me queer, sneer in your voice. Belittling me, as I cried post-breakup on the bathroom floor.  The hard was learning later that so many queer children die needlessly for the same reason, taking their own lives, when had they known about Caleph Al-Hakeem and Queen Christina, and those Two Spirits, the absolute inevitability of LGBTQ people throughout time, well, they wouldn’t have died. 

No, mother.  Being gay isn’t hard. Seeing a college friend, jaw wired shut after being bashed in Alphabet City, that brings pause. Begging for politicians to recognize gay men dying of AIDS, to allow them healthcare, a basic human right, yeah, that sucked, I agree. But we threw the ashes of their dead bodies over the White House fence and eventually those inside got the point. 

Mother, you were worried about me in your own way, but what you missed was the joy. What  you didn’t foresee was the dancing. Limelight, NYC, a former church, now lit by spotlights.  You didn’t know about the Pyramid Club down in the Village, friends dancing to the all-80s night. Or Private Eyes, where they misted the room with wet smoke and how we swam through it like a sea to meet lovers on the other side. 

Mother, you missed the parades. We marched down 5th Ave from the Park, following a lavender line through the city.  Held kiss-ins in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, grabbed the person next to us and went to town. It reminded me of being young on Sundays when we’d say peace be with you and reach across the church to shake hands with strangers, only in the protest it was WITH TONGUE. Yes, mother that was fun. That was exultant. The great rainbow ribbon of balloons. The dykes on bikes. Rounding Christopher Street past the Stonewall, queers cheering from their balconies and throwing streamers down on our heads like we were wartime heroes. The parade would dump out on to the west side Piers, into a rally, and drag queens would lip sync from the stage.  They’d call us names, yell out, hey bitches happy Pride! And I’d be pressed in among the masses, a glorious press of bodies, love, and joy,  we’d say our goodbyes and plan to meet back later when we’d dance by the water and kiss beneath fireworks, and the moon. 

No, mother, that wasn’t hard. That was life.  That was being myself. Feeling myself, feeling free.  Free of hatred, particularly of self-hatred, and no, that wasn’t hard. THAT was grace.

---

Laura Jones is a writer, journalist and teacher. Her nonfiction essays have been featured in two anthologies, including THEY SAID, edited by the poet, Simone Muench, and the upcoming, HOME IS WHERE THEY QUEER YOUR HEART. An excerpt of Jones’ graphic memoir "My Life in Movies" was published in 2019 in Fourth Genre, along with a companion essay commissioned by the journal. Her nonfiction work has also appeared in numerous literary journals including Creative Nonfiction, Foglifter, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Drum, and Wraparound South, to name a few. Jones earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Northwestern University, where she also won the 2015 AWP Journals Prize. She is currently co-teaching a curriculum she co-designed in LGBTQ+ history and theory to high school students at the Springhouse Community School.

Screwdriver

For some reason, I still think about the plumber.

How he asked me to stand in my bathroom and hold the loose faucet,

keep it from slipping and sliding on the fresh plaster he’d 

slapped down.

(Later, your friends tell you a plumber should 

never ask you to help them. Even in this, you 

should have been on your guard. Prepared to

say no, the liability on you.)

As I stand, he lies under me, loosening and tightening

screws, making the pipes jingle and jangle.

Grunts and groans expelled from his mouth

like belches from a small volcano.

(Meant to illustrate how hard he is working, 

not how close he is to eruption.)

And his fingers, stubby and stained as the handle of his screwdriver,

colliding with the insides of my thighs,

battering the fabric of my underwear.

(Not the first time a man’s hand has landed 

there uninvited. Makes you wonder if a skirt’s 

an invitation, in some language you don’t speak, 

and don’t want to.)

The first time, maybe an accident. The second time, I’m

not so sure. By the fourth time, no question left. He

gasps “sorry” between grunts.

(You squirm, of course, but you don’t kick 

him, you don’t abandon the wobbling faucet 

and walk off, you just want him to fix it so  

he’ll leave, so this will once again be

your home.)

At last, he gets up to retrieve another instrument from

his toolbox, another cold metal hand, and I retreat to the kitchen,

pulling my skirt down as far as it will go, dreaming of 

hot water and soap scouring my thighs and thinking 

I must have imagined it, it must have been an accident, 

(…doubting your own thoughts from a moment 

ago…)

this isn’t some strange man on the street, it’s

an employee, a professional, sent by 

the manager.

(Your skin knows it wasn’t an accident. It tingles

the way skin does when it’s pinched and 

released, the blood rushing back like 

something remembered.)

Another grunt, a metal clatter, and I follow the 

sound without thinking, back through my living room to

see his legs emerging from 

the bathroom door, dirty boots splayed to each side

like big dead bugs, all that’s moving is his hand

inside his pants

inside my bathroom

where he lays with his head 

on the tile floor.

(You knew you weren’t imagining it.)

And I don’t yell, I don’t demand to know what 

he’s doing, I just back away 

as he scrambles like one of those bugs

you think is dead till you get too close

and it runs.

(You don’t remember what happened

after that, if he apologized or

even

acknowledged it at all.)

That was it. A screwdriver-hand surveying 

my underwear

and the insides of my thighs,

a man pleasuring himself

in the spot where I stand before the mirror

each night,

wash my face,

scrutinize my flaws. And then, 

it was over.

(You’ve been through worse. The man who

followed you home and pushed you against 

the wall; the one who told you shh with his

hand against your mouth; the boyfriend who pinched your cheek like a slap without sound.)

So why, for some reason, is it the plumber I 

remember?

(“For some reason,” you say, you remember.

Still polite,

skirting

around the truth.)

I know exactly why.

It’s not because of what happened, inside my 

apartment, my safe space.

(Safe as your body should be.)

It’s because I called the apartment manager,

told him (of course, a him) what had happened,   

said I never wanted that man in my apartment again, and—

(You weren’t loud enough.)

—two years later, that man still comes, with his 

screwdriver-handle fingers,

whistles his way around the apartment building

knocks on my door

pets my dog and tells me he has to fix a leak, 

or a drain, or—

(You call back. They say he’s been talked to,

he won’t do it again. He’s the only handyman

for the building, there’s no one else.)        

—and I let him in, because what else can I do,

I can’t afford to move or launch a lawsuit, 

and each time I open the door to him,

the hinges whisper

(…your voice doesn’t matter…)

—and what else can I do, except shut out

that whisper, take my trembling fingers to a keyboard,

write words like darts

(…my voice…)

and aim them true.

---

SC Parent is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at USC. She is also a former professional submissive and switch at a commercial dungeon. SC's poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and Best of the Net.

The Problems with Simping

“It’s time to retire the very concept of simping and undo the shame that has come to be associated with crushes. ”

When I was around 16, I had my first crush - well, my first real crush. It was all fuzzy feelings and rose-colored glasses. It was like she stole all the light I needed to make my world shine, and I was so happy to let her keep it. I was young(er) and dumb(er) and wholly unprepared to deal with all of these new feelings. 

I didn’t know how to process them or act on them - so I didn’t. We were friends, and that was fine. It was good. It made me happy. We went everywhere together and did everything we could together too. We were friends, and for me, that was enough. All I needed was whatever she was willing to give, and if friendship was it, that was more than okay with me. 

It wasn’t, however, enough for my friends. It confused them that I wasn’t trying to “go for her” or ask her out or ask more of her and our relationship together. All of a sudden, I was a “simp.”

I have been called many things in my life, and of all the teasing names, I think simp is the most harmful. Not in the way that it’s mean, but in the way it encourages us to understand women and relationships. But before I get into all the reasons I have been called a simp, let’s talk about what it means. 

Google says the word originated in the early 20th century as a shortened way of referring to a “simpleton.” Since then, its meaning has mutated into the subtly patriarchal one we know today. Nowadays, simping vaguely describes “liking a girl too much,” though each friend group has their unique usage, this is what they are generally mean. 

How we use simp encourages us to feel entitled to female attention and attraction. The implication contained within our use of the word is that we are somehow lesser (simple or stupid) for not demanding more of the objects of our affection. It might not be intended necessarily, but it is implied. 

Now I was a young feminist, and while the term made me bristle, I went along with it. I got playfully frustrated and mildly annoyed, but deep down, I could tell there was something wrong with its use. I didn’t say anything because it was just a joke at the time, but now I can fully recognize its problematic nature. 

My friends, while well-intentioned, were not immune to the patriarchal overtone.

When they said I was a simp for being just friends with this girl, even though I wanted to be in a relationship, they implied that I was entitled to more. That didn’t sit right with me. Partly because I knew she didn’t owe me romance or some deep love, but also because it felt wrong. I wouldn’t want anyone to expect the same of me. 

This is the fundamental problem with “simping” today. We are all too often reducing the people we have a crush on to tools that should perform their function.

How can we possibly aim  It removes the real human love and joy that comes with falling hard and fast for someone without knowing their feelings. Suddenly consent and love fall out of sync with one another, and we impose upon each other in this small colloquial way a need for unrequited love to be shunned and consent to be devalued. 

Before all of this light roasting and banter, I was not hyperaware of the possibility of unrequited feelings or of the shame that comes with having a crush like this. I was just blissfully into her from a distance. This implantation of expectation and reciprocation tainted all these once pure feelings. 

Soon, I couldn’t stop seeing this messaging. Sure, it was all fun and games from my friends, but I couldn’t comfortably watch Netflix or even listen to music without feeling the weight of the patriarchal imposition. There was a cloud of shame that surrounded my thoughts and my actions towards this girl. 

That shame over time transitioned into resentment. And it was at that moment that I understood incel culture. All my thoughts came to a screeching halt because I realized only white boys on Reddit should thinking like this. (sorry to anyone fitting the description) 

That was something I wasn’t prepared for. With this unexpected feeling of anger that washed over me, I began to harbor this irrational frustration....for nothing.  

There was something crudely perverse about how I saw her now. I couldn’t live with that - I didn’t want to. I realized then that my problem wasn’t the act of “simping.” It wasn’t caring for her “too much” or being too good a friend. It was thinking that there is such a thing as “too much.” The fault lay with my conversion of infatuation (or whatever fledgling form of romantic love that comes with crushing) from this pure light feeling into something inundated with responsibility and transaction. 

I was lucky enough to recognize all these subtle, harmful messages, but what about those kids my age who aren’t? These are feelings that live in their subconscious and dictate how they view and treat the women (and any other object of their affection) in their lives. We shouldn’t be imbuing anyone with ownership over another’s heart, mind, or body. 

It’s time to retire the very concept of simping and undo the shame that has come to be associated with crushes. 

---

Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

They/Them Pronouns and Me

“Whenever someone describes me as or refers to me as “she” or “her” I have to remind myself that the only reason any of us are really here is to live as fully as possible being our authentic selves, and by knowing who I am in some capacity makes me that much closer to being myself. ”

“But that could just be a societally enforced antiquated view of gender, identity, and expression.” I hurriedly tacked onto the end of a statement regarding me possibly wanting to bind my chest to present more gender neutrally. I recently started using they/them pronouns, and even more recently I contemplated suicide, again. 

I’d never really thought about my gender or how I expressed it, I just wanted to exist as me and not disrupt the world as much as possible. I wanted to exist quietly, which I later realized wasn’t really possible for me. I went through multiple rebellious phases in my younger teenage years: listening to loud, dark music performed by eyeliner-clad social outcasts; silently flipping off my mother from the safety of my bedroom with shaking hands and red cheeks from tears or otherwise, shyly kissing the blushing cheek of the older neighbor girl which led to my ears getting hot, and painting the walls of my beige room with reckless abandon, smearing streaks of paint into the rented carpet; just to name a few. I’d like to think this is my next rebellious phase, but on a slightly larger scale. 

Whenever someone describes me as or refers to me as “she” or “her” I have to remind myself that the only reason any of us are really here is to live as fully as possible being our authentic selves, and by knowing who I am in some capacity makes me that much closer to being myself. I just wish the rest of the world would get the memo. I am not using these pronouns to hopefully get a diagonal line in some twisted and overly competitive game of oppression bingo—- just to be clear. Although that was something I had tried to convince myself I was subconsciously doing because of my desperate need for uniqueness and undeniable main character complex. But I’d realized this was incorrect when a boy used my desired pronouns to refer to me as his partner, and when I tell you the only possible physical manifestation of my utter euphoria At that moment could be described as a shit-eating grin. The boy and our time together wasn’t permanent, but that moment has been etched into my mind. So presenting as I do, a punky androgynous person with boobs, is my lifelong act of rebellion or of authenticity, or just being as much of myself as I can be.

---

Saya Iki is a student from San Diego, California. They are passionate about reading, writing, activism, and live music. They were selected to attend the Fir Acres Writing Workshop at Lewis and Clark College, where they worked with a team of mentors and peers to craft a portfolio showcasing work that represented them. Next year, they will be attending Lewis and Clark College, and will be majoring in English.

Whose Labour Matters?

As millions of Indian farmers pour into the streets, threatening the global supply of grains, medicinal herbs, and spices, one question should be on everyone’s mind - whose labor matters?

Every day these protestors push the meaning of dignified work further, but the unsung song in the middle of all the chaos is that of the women. Women are the backbone of most industries, but their role in Indian agriculture has been long overlooked. Now, as photos of the millions of (mostly) men marching for an audience with the Prime Minister flood the internet, it becomes even more apparent that this fight has never included the women who are doing most of the labor. 

While they own just 12.8% of all landholdings in the nation, they perform the bulk of the labor. Estimates place female participation in the agricultural sector at 73.2%. The majority of women in that position are working at the behest of their husbands and families. Forced into this uncompensated labor by economics or tradition, these women are largely unseen. This year nothing seems to be changing about that. 

Men are the face of farming in the country and the face of the protests today. This isn’t the first time the farmers have shown their great discontent with Prime Minister Modi’s false promises, but it is the first time they have shown up in such high numbers. Risking their marginal profits, health, and future relationship with the government, these farmers are embarking on a journey that threatens to shake how the West in particular views labor in the Global South. 

Still, the revolution isn’t about women -it’s about farmers. That distinction is crucial because we fail to address much of the root challenges to development, equality, and human rights when we fail to center women’s issues. At every level and in every industry, the problems faced by women at work are unique and necessary to create meaningful change. 

The question pops up again - whose labor matters?

For me, the answer is simple women’s labor, specifically women of color in the West and women in the global south. It is the informal, unseen, and undervalued work that fuels the global economy. Whether it is the women working long hours in the maquiladoras in Latin America or the vast fields of India’s farmlands, this is the work that generates profit. On the backs of these women, fortune 500 companies, silicon valley tech bros, and the wealthiest men in the world have built their empires.

Western media have been notably silent about reporting on the injustice and civil unrest in India. Many people continue to speculate about why but the reasoning is quite apparent to me and many others in the South. Understanding the many intricate ties that bind production processes in the global south and the egregious wealth that lies in the West would probably spark massive protests.

Sure, we all understand that women and young girls make our clothes, and there are suicide nets outside the factories that make our cellphones but knowing those things and understanding the snowball effects of capitalist greed are different. It is easy and comfortable to picture these people in faraway factories benefiting in some way from our oppressive tactics; it’s another thing entirely to see them act on their frustration and rebel. 

It is another thing entirely to understand how an avocado bought in LA means that a family in Chile goes without potable water, or how trade deals like NAFTA and USMCA that make goods cheap in the US mean that thousands of women die in Juarez. These are the harsh realities of Western wealth and comfort. These events are inextricably linked. 

The foundations of the system that bleeds the South dry for egregious Western profits were laid long before the world we know now came to be. To understand, we need to go back to a time where the West was more explicitly enjoying the fruit of colonial exploitation. 

In his book, Black Marxism, Cedric J Robinson explores the origins of African enslavement in the New World. The story he tells is one of a direct correlation between European (particularly Italian) capitalism and new world colonialism. 

Before Columbus ever embarked upon his journey, slave labor was already in use within the small empires European nations were building. The colonies of wealthy Spanish and Portuguese nobility extended into the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, sprawled across the Mediterranean, and had just extended into the Atlantic Sea. The aristocrats who made their living by taking part in these colonial expeditions frequently used slavery to supplement in times of high demand. But as Italian capitalists began to conspire with Spanish and Portuguese royalty, slave labor soon became the most widely used get-rich-quick scheme in the freshly colonized island of Madeira in the Atlantic Sea. 

Columbus came to the forefront of Spanish politics at a time of great change in the aristocracy. He was perfectly situated to embody this convergence of European powers, the son of an Italian merchant capitalist who married into lesser Portuguese nobility but was employed by the Spanish crown. He arrived in the new world primed for this new form of capitalist oppression. This was the preamble to the Atlantic slave trade. 

The slave trade would soon see millions of Africans taken from their homeland, stripped, packed, and shipped to the faraway countries that lay on the other side of the ocean. The actual number of people who were so brutally enslaved is unknown, but estimates place it at over 15 million. 

It was by taking indigenous land and enslaving once free peoples that colonial puppet masters enriched themselves and their countries. Soon England, Portugal, and Spain ballooned on the wealth they took from the colonies. England had used the expansion of empire to transform itself into a fully industrial capitalist state. The subjugation of the colonized people was central to the power and development of the new metropolises forming in Western Europe.

That was how things worked for many centuries; free labor in the Global South made for high profit margins in the West. 

But, like many other capitalist endeavors, it was unsustainable. Revolts and riots forced colonists to cease slavery as a practice. Still, ever since then, white men have followed in their predecessors’ tradition to find new ways to enslave their former colonial conquests. 

Today that manifests in the many multinational (that is to say, American or European based) corporations that have robbed governments of their country’s resources in exchange for short-term gain. In some ways, nothing has changed. But one thing that certainly has is the capitalist victimization of women. 

While the time of slavery saw many horrible atrocities inflicted on both men and women who worked for European slave masters, women were, for the most part, relegated to domestic work. After many bids for independence and economic freedom, women have become an even more significant part of the visible labor force. Whether formally or informally, female labor is generating massive amounts of wealth in the Global South. 

The South is struggling to achieve what the West has in its hundreds of years of colonialism, and it is quickly realizing that the growth the world is demanding requires oppression. It requires human rights abuses; it requires dehumanization and disconnection. At the end of the day, women are being forced to bear the brunt of the struggle. 

International organizations are quick to talk of the “rise of the Global South” but slow to acknowledge the failures of implanting capitalist value systems into these countries. Slow to speak on garment factory collapses in Bangladesh or miscarriages in maquiladoras. Slow to address the severe human cost of this “rise” to Western standards. Even less acknowledged is the role of foreign investment in that development. 

While foreign investment was once revered as the best way to promote development, but now more people recognize the system’s inherent flaws. It results in mega corps like Chiquita (aka “the United Fruit Company”) buying out small producers and taking the bulk of their profits. These are roundabout ways for well established and privileged people (usually men) to profit from cheap, exploited labor. 

The “rise of the Global South” is coming at a cost. One we, here in the South, are not prepared to pay. It looks like women working for no pay in India, and Modi attempting to rob the few farmers who do profit of their money. It looks ugly and disturbing because this “rise” is just another form of colonial violence. 

Again, the South is footing the bill for Western enrichment. And again, the question lingers- whose labor matters? 

If not these women, who are laboring in the shadows - then who? 

Is it the men who sit atop the fortune they are building for them? That seems to be who we value, at least with money. 

As the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is the face of labor that matters today. News media is eager to tell us his story, to sell us another falsehood about our ability to accrue a fortune like his. Yet, at the same time, we see thousands of videos from Amazon employees crying out for better pay and working conditions- to say nothing of those who provide the goods that Amazon ships.  

Long hours, few (if any) breaks, constant walking- these are just some complaints pouring out of the over 100 warehouses across the US. Yet, when asked about the importance of a “work-life balance,” Bezos neatly side steps any accusation of rights violations and skips to what might be the most capitalist concept of work ever. 

He talks about a “work-life harmony” because “balance” implies a strict trade-off. He goes on to talk about his own experience, saying: “I find that when I am happy at work, I come home more energized,  I’m a better husband, a better dad.” The problem is that it implies that your work should either spark joy or bring you the energizing positivity that allows you to be a better person at home. But that isn’t what Amazon’s work culture promotes; a culture which he actively claims he is proud of.  

He says this, and yet the work he puts forward for his employees is grueling and repetitive. It doesn’t spark joy or intrigue. It doesn’t promote balance. And it proves what we all know, the work that matters - that builds an empire, isn’t joyous, it doesn’t create harmony. 

Much of the work that makes his “work-life harmony” possible takes place on the ground floor in overheating warehouses, places he never has to see. Therein lies the problem, the work that generates wealth is far removed from those that keep it. 

Slavery was built on disconnect and the dehumanization that comes with racist, imperial, and ultimately capitalist mindsets. That is what allows us to make choices that directly impoverish and oppress our fellow humans. Bosses are removed from their workers, consumers are removed from the supply chain, and the meaning is removed from those who labor. 

Globalization and the nature of this increasingly globalized world have to make us ask - whose labor matters. We have to keep questioning that and questioning how best we can make sure that the money ends with those working.  Moreover, we need to keep pushing our governments to ensure that the workers who matter are getting paid like it.

What that looks like for you or your country might be different, but what is essential is that we are all seeking to close the gap between pay and the labor that matters.  

---

Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Frida, Me, and Feminity

A few years back when I was still doing my Masters in Women and Gender Studies, I came across the work of Frida Kahlo as a part of the course and took an instant liking to it. She was a painter, an artist, and muralist born in a village in Mexico in the early twentieth century. She fell in love with Diego Rivera and married him. For him, she left her village, her country, and her people and moved to the USA. Owing to an illness and a tragic accident, she experienced several miscarriages and never bore a child. The resulting depression led to her being admitted to several different mental asylums. 

Frida was a strong headed woman who was never bogged down by all the lemons that life threw at her and did everything she could to make her husband happy. However, Diego seemed to be unfazed by all her sacrifices and cheated on her continuously. He often had affairs with younger women while intermittently coming back to Frida, who accepted him every time he was back. 

Frida’s tragic life filled her canvases with amazing work. She painted the grotesque realities of life without shame. Her work talked about everything that was taboo at the time and still is in many parts of the world. She used her work to open up about her numerous miscarriages, her time in the mental asylum, and her broken inner self. Her immense sadness led her to make some of the best paintings in the world which shot her to global fame. Her work is mostly remembered for its pain and passion and its intense vibrant colours. A mixed race Mexican woman ruled the world of art in the fifth and sixth decade of the twentieth century. This was a feat in itself.

I believe it must have taken tremendous courage on her part to bare her inner self for the world to see, even though she had no guarantee of the reaction, especially when she dared to do it for the first time. Women in every part of the world at the time were still fighting for their rightful space in public lives. They were considered inferior to men in every respect. There were hardly any jobs for women, any readers for female writers, and admirers for women painters, an atmospher which has hardly changed today. It was through this chaos that Frida carved a niche for herself despite the many agonies she went through. She created a space for other women to come out of their homes and into the world of men, and to be able to share their side of the story. This is the biggest reason why her work is not only widely acclaimed but also taught in various institutions and loved in many more.

For people like me, her self-portraits have always been something to applaud. She painted herself with a uni-brow, a hint of moustache and hair on her neck. Having grown up in Mexico she was constantly aware of how different she was when compared to her white neighbors, and yet she continued to paint herself exactly as she looked instead of trying to fit in the cultural notions of beauty and femininity that were prevalent at the time. While working on any self portrait Frida made sure that her reality remained visible on the canvas. She painted every scar with pride and held her head high while doing so. Her boldness was admired by feminists all over.

When I first saw her self-portraits, I was in awe of this artist’s courage. How many women have the strength to face the world like she did? I found her inspiring, the way she looked in the mirror, the confidence in her eyes, the enigma dripping from her portraits which showed no sense of embarrassment for standing in front of the world, defying their pre-conceived notions. It made me want to salute the artist. She helped me realise the importance of being comfortable in one’s own skin. She celebrated the beauty that was at odds with the norm, breaking all the centuries-old conventions in one go through her self-portraits. I loved her work. I appreciated it and tried to be more like her - assertive, becoming the mistress of my own destiny, not giving into body shaming, loving every pimple mark on my face.

With time, I began diving into Frida’s collection more and more. She has more than a hundred masterpieces, most of which come from her own experience of life. As a staunch advocate of women’s rights, I looked for the subtle meaning, subtexts, and hidden messages in her work with interest. She is said to have depicted the desires of women boldly and passionately, celebrating the self and the several strata that remain buried beneath. Many critiques expressed that her work was a vehement and unrestrained feminine world in itself. And that is exactly why I enjoyed her work to such a great extent. She has painted the pain of a woman without inhibition on the canvas.

Frida was undoubtedly a visionary who knew what to say and how to be bold, however, the more I studied her self-portraits, the more questions concerning the context of her work began wandering through my brain.

The paintings that made me question Frida’s work the most were the self portraits that she painted soon after or during periods when her relationship with Diego was its most tempestuous. Usually Frida went into depression every time there was a problem in her married life and painted herself in the most un-feminine way she could.

This is the first self portrait she painted after her divorce while battling with grief of losing her husband. As we can see, she painted herself in cropped hair and an ill-fitting suit. Her shaved long hairs are strewn all over the floor as a symbol of rejection of her femininity. She has an empty expression on her face.

Finding love is one of the greatest joys of life and losing it one of its most devastating disasters, but the more I pondered this particular portrait I disagreed with her rejection of femininity as a response to grief, and questioned what it meant for me.

My femininity, my love and pride for womanhood, my desire to look or not look a certain way can never be attached to acceptance from a man. Loving a man, becoming the love of his life, the desire and passion to share my life with him is entirely different from trying to be a woman just for his sake. Frida cut her hair short because Diego admired her long hair. If she did that to get rid of her feelings for the man she should have looked liberated, free of the burden of loving a man who left her in mental asylum to run around with younger girls.

Were Frida alive today, I would have asked her how she could betray her womanhood? Is a woman only a woman if a man loves her? Will she not remain one if he leaves? After all the bold proclamations of being a woman defying the patriarchal norms of beauty, was her assertion of femininity ultimately a result of a relationship with a man and not something that came from within?

Looking beautiful, looking liking a woman, admiring all the curves in my body, putting on lipstick and mascara, and smiling at my own reflection in the mirror is a joy to me. Claiming my femininity is a thing I do because it makes me happy and not because it would make me pleasing in a man’s eyes. Why Frida would want to get rid of that is beyond my comprehension.

The man I loved with all my heart for more than five years married another woman three short months after our last fight and has married twice since. Yes, it makes me question a lot of things said and done in our relationship, it makes me question my self-worth at times too but never ever did the thought of disowning my feminine self came to my mind. I still dress the same way, use the same makeup, and keep on growing my hair long and cutting it short alternatively, not because a certain man likes or doesn’t like the way I present myself, but to make myself happy. I do not feel that my expression of myself is connected to a man, and it makes me sad that Frida maybe thought that hers was.

My sense of worth as a woman leads me to not being dependent on anyone for approval. To me, asserting my feminism means refusing to be treated like a second class citizen, to proclaim that my work, my decisions, my words, my thoughts, and I as a person are equally important. I hold the same status as any other man in my vicinity and I deserve the same respect, admiration, acceptance, and accolades as he does.

The other thing that makes me curious was her tolerance to Diego’s infidelity and disloyalty. A woman as bold and courageous as Frida, allowed a man to betray her repeatedly. She then accepted him every time he came back to her knowing that it wouldn’t last long. Like clockwork Diego would run after a new girl within weeks, leaving Frida devastated. I understand the concept of love, yet I felt frustrated that her value was so closely tied to her relationship with Diego, and how much her work suffered for it.

Frida’s obsession with Diego overtook her assertive self and that is where she stops being a role model to me. She had once said, ‘Being the wife of Diego is the most marvelous thing in the world..... I let him play matrimony with other women. Diego is not anybody’s husband and never will be, but he is a great comrade.’ 

With my newly acquired sense of criticism for Frida’ work, I looked into her work and noticed that her portraits changed their tone according to the way Diego treated her. When he loved her, accepted her as his woman, Frida painted herself in the ways he cherished her – long hair, traditional Mexican costume, Tehuana, and jewelry. Whenever they got divorced or separated (they went through both), she would discard the clothes, the decorative jewelry, and cut her hair short and when they reconciled, she painted a self-portrait again with long braided hair.

This makes me wonder if those self-portraits were actually the way Frida was or just a reflection of herself in Diego’s eyes? Who was she to herself, the woman with short hair or the woman with long?

Changing with time is inevitable, our self-image too transforms with that. However, discarding and reclaiming her femininity according to Diego – his behavior and vision makes Frida lose her position as a feminist artist for me.

Womanhood is not a material possession, it has no concrete definition neither can it be described with characteristics nor labels. Instead, it is an abstract concept and that too is a fluid one. You are a woman if you feel like one, if your inner self identifies with the beauty of femininity, when you look at the world with the eyes of a woman irrespective of how the world looks back at you. It is not something that could be switched on and off like a light bulb. It doesn’t matter if you are happy or sad, in a relationship or single, a mother or not, are emotionally vocal or a private person. 

In a world where thousands of women are fighting constantly for equality and a more gender-fluid society, where activists are trying to create an atmosphere for women to be no longer considered subjective to men but be treated as an equal, as a person with individual existence and as creatures of wisdom who have the power to decide for their own, Frida’s paintings remind me of the tragedy of patriarchy on woman potential.

She has been and will always be a world acclaimed painter. Her art, her calibre as a painter,  and the beauty of her work in undeniable and will surely last for centuries to come. I just hope that we can reach a place where artists to come like her will not feel like their self-expression and creativity are tied to their male partners.

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Nazia Kamali is a research scholar of Gender and Literature. She has written for local news paper as well as research journals. Additionally her poems have been published in anthologies by Cape Comorin Publishers, PCC Inscape and also in magazines. When not hunched over the keyboard clicking away keys, Nazia is busy admiring birds and trees around her.

Planned Obsolescence

“Women (especially women of colour) are bearing the burden of this capitalist invasion on human connection and all the subtly negative effects that come with it.”

Content warning: This article briefly touches on the subject of abusive relationships.

The practice of paying a dowry is extremely foreign to Western society today, and yet in every way imaginable women are still products being bought and sold in the implicit market for love and romance. Men are the consumers and the producers of female sexuality, love, and affection. Lessons taught to them by their fathers, learnt from centuries of female oppression. 

This realization is hard to come to, but once you see it, you can't unsee it; all these small ways that society has encouraged us to not only internalise the language of the market but to weaponize it for oppression. Women (especially women of colour) are bearing the burden of this capitalist invasion on human connection and all the subtly negative effects that come with it. 

When we live in a world that grants men money, power, and respect by virtue of their existence and forces women to earn the most basic tenets of their humanity it is only natural that the woman is the product and the man is the consumer. Men are the profiteers in the market that crowds the feminine form and forces women into their place on the shelf.

That then begs the question - what are they consuming? 

In truth, the answer is whatever they may desire. When the market outside is rooted in consuming and discarding, we empower men to view women as assets to buy into and opt out of, not people with the same autonomy as themselves. In turn, women become commodities that gain and lose value based on what they might offer - they are like multipurpose appliances, new phones with different, better specs, with more or less to offer. This reduction of women to tools empowers men to use them as such. 

Love, children, kindness all become upgrades that elevate female value, characteristics that maintain the patriarchal society that holds our bodies and minds hostage. Who we are is a question that fades into the background, as we market ourselves based on what we can offer. These aren’t shakable aspects of femininity, we carry the burdens of this constant market into every part of life and in turn men continue to “shop” wherever they can. 

The modeling industry is dominated by women managed (primarily) by men, that sell to us “average women” an image of sexual perfection, and show men the best that their capital (social, cultural, or monetary) can buy. When I spoke to Ellie, a university student and part time model, she expressed to me her thoughts on this driving force in the modelling industry;

“They [female models] represent what men are supposed to desire, and what women are meant to become to gain the desire of those men. When you don’t fit the archetype of that desire, you are expected to change yourself, to consume the objects supposedly used by these ideal figures in order to imitate them. In the industry, there is a strong pressure to fit the mold of the ideal model, to embody that natural perfection.”

This idea of the perfect woman is simultaneously accessed and obscured by the artificial. The current state of the industry glorifies an image of white beauty, even when it attempts to be “diverse” it continues to place that “natural perfection” as the standard. The women we are meant to aspire to be come to us prepackaged in glistening shrinkwrap on the highest shelves pushing us a vision of ethereal beauty augmented by photoshop but their beauty isn’t inherently abrasive or oppressive - the commodification of their form is. Women on both sides of shrinkwrap are ultimately suffering from the images we continue to see, but in the professional capacity models are undoubtedly worse off.

The lines between the professional and romantic are so often blurred. Ellie highlighted how flirtation is at times necessary for advancement, that casual touches and coy glances make or break your modelling future. Saying;

“There can be a lot of unnecessary touching to fix how clothing is sitting or moving your hair and sometimes it is necessary and other times it is more an act of advantage. A lot of male photographers get agitated if you reject this kind of behaviour, and in some cases it is a well known ‘secret’ that being friendly and flirty and inviting gets you better images for your portfolio, or makes it more likely for them to refer you to other jobs.”

It has become all too commonplace that accepting these subtle cues of potential romantic entanglement advances your position, but this effect isn’t unique to the modelling industry. Beyond the modelling industry, when we expand our scope into the areas of business, finance, even healthcare -  these small advancements, that border on sexual harassment at worst and are wildly inappropriate at best, permeate. This was echoed by another woman I sat down with, Elaine Teo. 

As Elaine put it;

“When I look across my corporate experience, especially at the start of my career, there was definitely an undercurrent there. From my observations and experiences in the workplace over 27 years, women get subjected to objectification, appearance-based judgment and unwanted, unsolicited interactions often of a flirtatious or sexual manner - often as 'jokes' which one is 'supposed not to take too seriously', yet they can still be affecting, to a degree far outstripping that of men, who can just 'get on with the job'. Which is what I definitely wanted as a woman too, but which was not always given to me. 

When I have withdrawn either implicitly or explicitly from letting myself be seen in a certain objectified way - sending certain signals to say you don’t treat me this way, you don't look at me with that regard, with that intention, or with that desire - I have often noted a cooling off, a distancing and an awkwardness. To make it worse, it’s often conducted underneath the surface so it's quite challenging and you never quite know whether you are reading too much into it. To me this is a kind of gaslighting, because you are led to doubt the truth of your own lived experience and perceptions, and because there is a social and political risk to a woman to 'make a fuss' about such behaviour, so often we are led to suffer terribly in silence, suppressing our own voice because we are afraid no one will believe us if we were to raise it, or we will get ourselves and/or others 'into trouble', make things 'troublesome/embarrassing' and so on. This is especially so in cases when those who have made inappropriate comments or behaved inappropriately are popular or in senior positions. I consider myself fortunate compared to other women I know that I have received unwelcome and inappropriate behaviours relatively mildly. But these experiences still leave their scars on me. No one should have to be subjected to such unwanted and distressing experiences.”

The question here is who gave men the right to feel so entitled, to feel so empowered to look at and touch the women they work with in that way. The pressure of sexual advancement is a flagrant abuse of the power men have by simply existing in the workspace only further marginalizes women who now doubt their own experiences and fear speaking up about them.  And yet it is her sudden rejection of this subtle lust and attraction makes her less worthy as a coworker? 

Everyone, June 17th by Annie Savoy

Female value is directly related to what romantic prospects women offer. We could be the most drop-dead gorgeous model or the most qualified and diligent employee but none of it matters if you aren’t partaking in the quiet sexual politics at play in the background. Television and media teach us to demonise women who “sleep their way to the top” but praise and deify the men who allow for that to be an option.

Whether men are saying it explicitly or not, in or out of the workplace, the quickest way to earning the jaded form of respect they offer to women is by leaving yourself open as a sexual conquest. The juxtaposition is clear, women can't view men as opportunities but men are free to see them as sex dolls. Love and sex are all things men get to see as gateways to respect. When you, as a woman, have to trade in your romantic attention, love, or sex for the feeble respect men have to offer we internalise an idea of love that is rooted in transaction. 

Eventually that value runs out as well. 

The problem with the way men are socialised is that society encourages them to take and take until either they have taken all that they need or the unfortunate object of their affection has given all that they can. 

There is a lot of discussion of what it means to be in a toxic relationship, when I discussed this with Elaine she commented saying: " It’s toxic because it leaves you feeling uncomfortable to be yourself or to be seen” But what are we unconsciously afraid of men seeing?

The answer is, the truth. The nature of internalising the market, of being sentient objects in the market, is that we are hyper aware of the image we are “selling.” In the back of our minds we are constantly thinking about how we are sticking to the script and reflecting only what we know our partner wants - what they desire. 

This, however, is a two way street. Men are keeping up a veneer, whether it is about how much they make or how kind or caring they are, the lie is implicit. Women keep up a veneer about their values, who they are and how they look. These most basic aspects of themselves must be concealed. 

In a world where happiness is so thoroughly intertwined with togetherness and relationships we all are seeking love at the detriment of ourselves and our true values. While men are gaining the most, they are gaining clout and affection, women are taught that men are often the end goal. But women, by virtue of being the ones without the power, are being shorted in this exchange. 

Women must cut away at themselves to put on a show, reflect a false image - one that wants 4 kids, a big house, a high power job, and a mildly attentive husband. When we chip away at our own values and ignore our own minds and eyes we can’t live in true freedom. We are constantly stuck in the shrinkwrap, we never truly leave our place on the shelf, we are still products. 

Healthy relationships can’t be transactional. As Elaine continued; “[in a healthy relationship] you are safe to be seen, you are safe to be comfortable, safe to be yourself.” Unfortunately, life isn’t filled with healthy relationships. 

When I spoke with Shelly, a physicist, she told me of her own experiences with abusive and toxic relationships. She started off saying; “I thought because I was an educated person I would have seen this coming. I didn’t date people who looked up front like what they cared about was me being some sort of status symbol. I thought I would spot that a mile away but it came to bite me in a different way.”

Shelly shared with me her story of dating a relationship coach who turned out to be fundamentally incapable of handling a relationship. She was intrigued by them, they were spiritual and seemed caring and chill. She was in a place where she wanted to seek that out so she did,  they dated for a year and half but she realized by the end that “I was just an object, literally I was just an object.”

There were moments where she was being blatantly gaslit in front of other people about things she was seeing and experiencing with others. Yet, the spell was impossible to break. She continued to explore the intricacies of this year and a half, all these tiny moments that upon reflection paint a clear picture of abuse and manipulation. 

What resonated most throughout her story was that when she was no longer useful in one way he pivoted to abusing some other facet of her identity. Suddenly her beauty wasn’t enough, then it was her kindness, then it was her presumed maternal instinct, and so on until he crept his way into her life in unreal ways. 

This all came to a head when he was physically abusive. After an altercation Shelly quickly came to understand the way her life had transformed. She knew then that all of these little acts that seemed simple at first were just getting his foot in the door for the next thing. These were just his ways of testing the waters, and her options were clear - run or stay. 

While abusive and toxic relationships are the most extreme extension of this sick logic, in most long term relationships women are asked more and more until they extricate themselves from the trappings of heteronormative relationships. It’s more than just cooking and cleaning or having children, it is also the maternal gentling and the burdens of sexual performance. 

It takes a toll on the women who have to go through that. As Shelly put it “It’s just incredibly demeaning and demoralizing to be treated as an object when I bring so much more than that. This is not who I am, I am a human being, I am not something that can be reduced to a list of attributes.” 

The problem is that men have accepted this shopping list mentality that it's nearly impossible to leave behind. Transaction is an inherent part of the neoliberal society that awaits outside of our homes, but when society allows men to feel this undue power, this unwarranted entitlement - we bring neoliberalism home with us. It becomes something that perverts the most comfortable and seemingly incorruptible parts of human existence. 

Love, romance, beauty, they all become marketplaces. The women we know become objects. The men we know, the consumers. And the uncontrollable and unsustainable logic of the market reigns, breeding toxicity and abuse wherever it goes. The boom and bust of what “a good woman” is leaves women chasing behind this or that attribute while men laze about in the complacency of a wealthy existence. 

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Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Annie Savoy is an American photographer who takes self-portraits and overlays them with text. She explores themes of power, longing, desire and ennui. Her pictures are risky and provocative and they question the viewer’s preconceived ideas around nudity, femininity and sex. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Twitter.

Review: Velvet Collar Issue 2: Rough Trade Secrets

The second issue of sex worker Bryan Knight’s comic series Velvet Collar, “Rough Trade Secrets,” depicts the aftermath of Rentman’s shutdown, the series’ thinly veiled fictionalization of rentboy.com. Abel, still chasing the wrong men, has shifted into freelance graphic design work. Storm’s precocious daughter, now a teenager, has become a high-school decrim activist, to the chagrin of her dad. (It’s hard to keep it on the low when your own child is blowing up your spot). Billy had to live in his car for a while, but has since joined the other gig economy as a Lyft driver. Indomitable Daddy is in a relationship with a trapeze student hunk and steering clear of sex work. Rica Shay is barely scraping by, increasingly relying on his side- side-hustle of selling blackmarket steroids. 

Into this morass of disruptive fallout from the Rentman raid stomps Ten, a butch/femme switch in a men’s suit, high heels, and a shock of red hair falling over one eye—with two bodyguards in leather dog masks in tow. Ten lays out a proposition, claiming that the Rentman servers are full of personal data incriminating important politicians and businessmen, a “political nuclear bomb.” He proposes to pay them $50,000 apiece to steal the servers out of federal custody. This bonkers scheme is greeted with scorn until Ten reveals that he also has dirt on our five workers—Rica Shay for selling steroids, Daddy for tax evasion, etc. Abel is summarily evicted from his apartment as proof, and Ten threatens to ruin the lives of the rest of them if they don’t help. 

Ten then directs their anger towards a notorious troll, a “seventy-one year old real estate tycoon from Queens,” (get it?) who has “spent years collecting personal information on hundreds of sex workers…” fingering him as the villain behind their blackmailing. It falls on Storm—who is revealed to be a secret agent of an organization called NAAMAH—to convert our five into a special ops team and undertake this high-stakes mission. Storm enlists his brother Star, who is also a down-low sex worker and possible secret agent to help. In the final frames, Ten is revealed to be the lover of the new lead prosecutor on the Rentman case, lamenting how he will have to betray his fellow workers.  

Issue 1 represents a strong start to a promised 9-part series, with clearly rendered characters, concise and neatly interwoven plot lines, and some graphically beautiful frames. Issue 2 departs from established facts to speculate on what might be the true motivations and consequences of the Rentman/Rentboy raid. The graphics are less consistent than in Issue 1—there are two artists on inks, and a third on colors and the cover—and the palette is generally murkier. This might reflect the plot, a hairball of conspiracy theories, double-crossers, and secret agents. It will take some Daddy-level acrobatics to untangle all the strands and resolve them into a plausible conclusion over the seven following issues, however a sneak preview has been released of Issue 3, entitled “Performance Anxiety,” showing our stalwart team fucking their way into a federal storage facility. 

With that said, Velvet Collar breaks ground in chronicling the new realities of sex work in the SESTA/FOSTA era, in which once-reliable platforms have vanished, leaving workers scrambling. The observational work that the creators have undertaken to depict relatable sex worker characters will go a long way in getting us through to the end of a story that is surely unfinished and untold. 

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Former sex worker and activist Dale Corvino’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including online at the Rumpus and Salon. He won the 2018 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook contest with a trio of short stories; Worker Names was published in 2019. Recent publications include a reflection on Chile’s massive populist uprising and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and an essay on growing constraints on adult online content in Matt Keegan: 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press. He lives in New York City. https://dalecorvino.com

Review: Velvet Collar Issue 1: Unhappy Endings

Velvet Collar, a comic book series written and produced by Bryan Knight and drawn by queer comic artist Dave Davenport, depicts the lives of five male escorts. In Issue 1, “Unhappy Endings,” their escort listing service is shut down by the feds, making it a thinly-veiled representation of the 2015 Rentboy raid.

Davenport had previously represented a sex worker in his homoerotic series Hard to Swallow. Set in fictional Fogtown, the series features Doug, a compact young tough who works as a stripper at a gay club. Doug has a special bond with two supernatural characters: a preppie gay who transforms into a sexually ravenous werewolf (Feral), and the Ghost Skater, a skateboarding ex of Doug’s, now a horny ghost. With each story line, the characters’ unashamed, raucous sexuality is an instrument of resolution. The supernaturals rescue Doug from danger, then fuck him silly.

To date, two full-color issues of Velvet Collar has been realized and financed through crowdsourcing, with a third in production. Volume 1 opens with expository blocks offering the backstories of the five male sex workers. Each is based on an actual worker who consented to participate in the project. Some names are changed to avoid disclosure. For their likenesses, Davenport worked from photos and videos. 

Davenport’s hand in drawing Velvet Collar v. 1 is tighter than it is in Hard to Swallow, perhaps because there are more characters and interwoven storylines. The characters are faithfully rendered and colored, and the New York City settings are drafted with precision. The reader shifts from one character depiction to the next via a chain of phone calls gathering up the group to attend an event at the offices of “Rentman,” the world’s largest online escort listing service. This narrative device centers technology, reflecting the current reality of technology-mediated sex work. As with Hard to Swallow, many of the depictions of sex—both personal and transactional—are explicit, raucous fun.

Part of the mission of Velvet Collar is to depict sex workers as fully realized protagonists with complex emotional lives. The five represent a range of ethnicities, body types, and ages. The character Abel Rey is based on a Latino worker active in New York. In his frames, he is seen arguing with a love interest who has “discovered” that he’s a sex worker, despite a previous disclosure “on (their) second date.” The sequence, charged with emotion and sexual heat, resolves with Abel giving him a worker-in-relationship go-to: “Other people pay cash, all you have to do is pay attention.”

Bearish Billy is shown in the midst of a call with a submissive who worships his hairy body and big belly. The character Rica Shay is a composite, partly inspired by the Los Angeles-based gay hip-hop performer and dancer. Frames depict Rica Shay saying goodbye to a loving partner while he pursues his music career, which is in turn financed by  sex work. One of his regulars is shown being supportive of his musical ambitions. The character navigates a romantic relationship, his creative aspirations, and client expectations.

African-American Storm is based on the true experiences of a “down-low” escort who requested that his name and likeness be withheld. He is married with a wife and child; in the opening sequence, the silos between his sex work and family life come crashing down when his young daughter announces, “Dad, I know you’re a prostitute.” This story line grapples with deeper questions of disclosure in the lives of sex workers. While his daughter is understanding, his wife raises serious risks: “If child services finds out, they’ll take her away from you.”

The last of the quintet is Scott, aka Daddy. Daddy is a trapeze instructor and a sex worker at 62. The characterization draws on a veteran worker whose longevity also defies stereotypes. These five convene for the launch party of an ad campaign in which they are featured at the offices of Rentman on the occasion of the company’s 20th anniversary. Federal agents in black crash the party, and overrun the office with force, to the astonishment of our five, who are turning the corner just as Rentman’s handcuffed employees are being perp-walked towards a police cruiser.

The cover art depicts the founder of Rentman bound up in yellow crime-scene tape. While stylized, it accurately conveys the circumstance of founder Jeffrey Hurant, who—after being arrested and charged with promoting prostitution and conspiracy to commit money laundering—was convicted and sentenced to six months in federal prison. The acting U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case described the business as an “Internet brothel.” Before it was shuttered by ICE/Homeland Security, Rentboy.com was the single largest global platform for male sex workers. Prior to 2015, it had operated without any significant federal scrutiny. The raid was part of a coordinated effort—in advance of the passage of SESTA/FOSTA—to shut down websites with prominent sex worker presence (Backpage was seized soon afterwards).

In its detailed frames, Unhappy Endings does an excellent job of presenting its five main characters navigating sex work in their individual lives. It also establishes the Rentboy raid as a turning point in male sex workers’ access to online platforms, a topic to be unpacked in subsequent issues.  

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Former sex worker and activist Dale Corvino’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including online at the Rumpus and Salon. He won the 2018 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook contest with a trio of short stories; Worker Names was published in 2019. Recent publications include a reflection on Chile’s massive populist uprising and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and an essay on growing constraints on adult online content in Matt Keegan: 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press. He lives in New York City. https://dalecorvino.com

The Singles Scene: The Evolution of the Unattached Woman From Frumpy Old Maid to Empowered Single

Old Hollywood movies from the 1940s and 50s (with some exceptions) seemed to believe that once a woman hit age twenty-five that there were two types of unmarried she could be: a frumpy old maid or a femme fatale of the loose woman variety. Take Effie Perine, the secretary in The Maltese Falcon (1941). She is good at her job. She’s dedicated to Spade and Archer, and she’s on top of her work - in any other time she might have been a detective in her own right - but not in 1940s America. In the film, dedicated, hardworking, good-at-her-job Effie is portrayed as nothing more than an unmarried woman who wears sensible shoes, comes to work in the dead of night when her male boss calls her in, and goes home to Mother every evening. It’s very important for the film to mention many times that dear, old-maid Effie lives with her mother even though she’s a grown adult, lest she be mistaken for a femme fatale of, say, the Brigid O'Shaughnessy variety. At least dear Effie doesn’t have to worry about looking immoral like the other unmarried woman in this film, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, whose immoral exploits get her into deep trouble many times before the curtain falls. Then again, at least crafty Brigid gets kissed.  

The notion of a single woman who was either doomed to a life of ill repute or living with Mother and her cats was perpetuated during post-WWII America right on through the 1950s. However, in the early 60s a new buzz word started to breeze through New York City nightclubs and Los Angeles bars, a term that, when applied to an unattached woman, freed her from the choice of either old-maid or femme fatale. An unmarried woman was no longer ‘alone’ or ‘on the prowl’ she was savvy, sexy and now alluringly, single.

The term ‘single’ as it refers to a woman’s relationship status started to be used colloquially in the early 1960s. It was popularized in or around 1962 when Ellen Gurly Brown wrote a best selling book called Sex and the Single Girl about her experiences as an unattached woman in Los Angeles. While Sex and the Single Girl did not single-handedly create the term single, or the sexually liberated movement that followed it, this book  and Gurly Brown’s use of the word ‘single,’ began a conversation and helped define a movement which led to unmarried girls going out into the world, living on their own, dating well into their twenties and (gasp!) thirties as they strove to find their places outside the realm of wife and motherhood. 

This new single woman could come home from work and slip into more comfortable clothing, she could stay out all night and crawl into bed at an ungodly hour with no recourse. Sexual morality and the politics of it became looser as well. A naked ring finger past high school graduation (or college graduation in some wealthier circles) was seen not as a curse but something to be enjoyed before settling down. 

By the early ‘60s the culture was changing and the notion of Women’s Liberation on many fronts, cultural, sexual, professional, was starting to take hold in America. In 1962 Gurly Brown, a former secretary at an advertising agency in Los Angeles turned-copywriter and then writer, published Sex and the Single Girl, a partial autobiography of her own life as a single, working girl with a healthy social calendar and part how-to manual on how any woman could have a job, live on her own and look damn good doing it. (For example, Gurly Brown instructs women to never wear their nice, expensive clothing at home unless they are entertaining because they will wear their clothes out more quickly. Instead, wear old clothes, even rags, or hell, walk around naked, to make sure you’re not wearing out your nice clothes when you’re not being seen). Though Sex and the Single Girl was thought by its first publishers to be just another woman's book, the explosive popularity of the book showed just how badly alternative definitions of womanhood were needed. It was published in over 28 countries and stayed on the Best Seller List for almost a year. Sex and the Single Girl struck a cultural chord and its influence reached far beyond informing women on how best to get a date to pay for a new pair of stockings (she suggests asking for cab money, then taking the bus home and pocketing the money to buy new stockings later). Her advice wasn’t just about surviving (and thriving) as a single woman, it was about living on your own and enjoying yourself. 

Sex and the Single Girl was part of the zeitgeist of the 1960s, or as some would call it, the Swingin’ Sixties, but Ellen Gurly Brown wasn’t the only person championing these ideas. There were singles bars and clubs sprouting up in many metropolitan areas and entire clothing lines cropped up to cater to the new single girl aesthetic. This new independent woman was pretty. She could be flashy, but she wasn’t trashy or “loose” (as she might have been called in a previous generation). The entire Singles Scene was in full swing and with it came liberation for women, liberation not only to have a career and take care of herself but liberation to live unwed until she was ready to settle down. No longer did a girl have to race to find a husband before she hit twenty-five, or bear the wrath society placed upon the Old Maid. 

Ellen Gurly Brown’s brand of feminism wasn’t for everyone. Sex and the Single Girl came out the same year as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, a much more hard hitting, serious look at the role of women in society from the lens of women in the workplace. Critics of Gurly Brown noted that the way she sold sex and unattachment was hurting the feminist cause and perpetuating the idea that women were merely sex objects. However, what Brown wanted was to show women that there was another path, it was not just marriage or old maid-hood. And at the end of the day, the single girl in Gurly Brown’s book is a career woman who wishes to live her own life on her own terms without judgement. While Friedan did not come around to Gurly Brown entirely, they did have many conversations about their respective brands of feminism and they did come to a place of mutual respect. 

While she had her critics, Gurly Brown strove to level the playing field for women through the term ‘Single’ and all the flash and playfulness that went with it. She worked as an author and later as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine where she championed female writers who tried to challenge the stagnant role of women in culture and society. Like men, women wanted to play the field, meet a few people, and make the right decision about who to settle down with. In fact, she was 37 years old before she married the film producer David Brown.

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Jessica Stilling is a Hugo nominated author of young adult and literary fiction. Her last novel, The Beekeeper’s Daughter, explores issues women face with mental health through the lens of the life of the feminist poet, Sylvia Plath. Her next literary novel The Weary God of Ancient Travels follows a woman as she tries to piece her turbulent past together after she loses her memory. Jessica has published articles in publications like Ms. Magazine, Bust Magazine and The Writer Magazine. She lives in southern Vermont with her family. 

We Have Coups at Home

As US citizens looked on in horror at the events of January 6th, I sat from my home in Jamaica alternating between distress and hilarity. The situation before me was absurd on so many levels, but the sense of irony that permeated the moment couldn’t be shaken. Decades of “covert operations” and dubious foreign policy all came to a head in an attack that many people saw coming. 

White America has a history of aiding and abetting insurrection and the actions that day in the Capitol building were a reflection of that. Coronavirus, travel restrictions, and stay at home orders have forced many to be focused on local action and it seems white supremacists are no different in that regard. As thousands of Trump supporting terrorists stormed the building leaving in their wake explosive materials and carrying in their midst dozens of rich and well connected white men an air of despair and disgust fell over the US. 

The weeks following these horrific events have been filled with politicians, news anchors, and journalists everywhere rushing to reassure the US that this “isn’t who we are as a country.” But that can’t possibly be the truth, this is the same country that has admitted to providing military and financial assets to at least 10 coups in Latin America alone. That number isn’t counting invasions or cases of only “suspected” US involvement. Hell, the US backed a coup just last September! 

Undermining democracy is just as much a part of the US’ international legacy as baseball and slavery. 

The attempts of those who empowered, emboldened, and condoned white supremacy under this administration through complicit complacency or active encouragement to wash their hands of guilt sickens me. That extends to more than just career politicians and into the “liberal media '' that failed to call out and disavow Trump’s wildest claims. 

Big media organisations that have spent hours agonising over the Trump administration's most vile and ridiculous actions, giving him the foot in the door he needed to escalate. Their failure to actively call out the borderline (and sometimes actually) illegal actions of the former president and his cronies paved the way for those rioters in a way no sympathetic Capitol police person could have. 

The career politicians who stood idly by watching the US’ political landscape erode before their eyes ought to hang their heads in shame. This might just be the most bipartisan act that took place in these last 4 years. Men and women on both sides of the aisle remained mild in their condemnations, weak in their convictions, and feeble in their actions. 

The false calls for unity with radical right wing fascists sicken me. All the Republicans who failed to do what was right, are quick to claim the country can go forward without accountability. Impeachment is the bare minimum, charges are the bare minimum, increased security measures are the bare minimum. 

Unity? 

Unity is a distant dream they should have thought about before they endorsed the vile racist, misogynistic, ableist (and the list goes on) man child. Unity is what they should have thought about last summer as they brazenly condemned protests for black lives. The Republican party has never been concerned with unity, what they are concerned with is their bottom line. They are concerned with their next election and satisfying their now radicalised base, because what truly matters is power. 

All these important political actors have all played a major role in allowing radical white supremacist rhetoric to fester in the American middle class.  The blood and rubble is on their hands and their disservice to the American people is duly noted. 

Finally, all the assertions that there is a way to “bring America back” without questioning what it is to be from the US and how and who got us here sickens me. What is the America you want to bring back? Yet again, the US’s elite are peddling lies, misinformation, and easy ways out of complex and confounding situations. One thing I have noted in coming to the US and attempting to understand US media cycles and politics is that coddling is an all too common practice. There is no comfort in uprooting white supremacy, there never will be. Hard work is never easy and changing a nation isn’t either. 

US history is bleak but this is a time to look forward. To dream bigger and realize a United States that is at least more united in the pursuits of justice, peace, and radical change for the better. 

Whether it comes from your local news anchor or the incoming President, we need to reject a narrative that makes these terrorists and their accomplices (active or passive) comfortable. That is what got us into this mess in the first place. When we prioritize the voices and comfort of more white, rich, well connected men (and women) we empower them to seek out that comfort at the expense of even democracy. 

The failed coup of January 6th remains one of the most hilarious and harrowing things I have lived in my very short life. With a solid 40 years (at least) ahead of me I dread to think what future the US will build for itself. Whether it will be one darkened by years of further white supremacist action or enlightened by the liberation of the many oppressed peoples who reside here is as yet unclear to me. As I prepare for my next 3 years and a half in this peculiar nation I continue to ponder  what it means to bring home your foreign policy with you. Furthermore, I question what it means to exist here in a time of great political and socio economic disarray. 

I have many hopes for the future of the US, and while most involve preserving my personal safety and sanity, others are hopes for a nation that can fully accept all the people it holds within its expansive borders. I hope that this rattled and divided country can unify in the years to come, after the dust has settled and the charges have been filed, after accountability and unlearning. I hope that one day the US and its foreign relations wont strike fear in my heart or anyone else’s. Finally, I hope for a future that is filled with opportunity and joy for everyone. 

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Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Breaking into Male Sex Work and Society, Representation in Comics

Have you lifted the 500+ page Male Sex Work & Society? The 2014 textbook is something of a staple in gender studies programs around the country, but the publishers got some flack from the sex worker community for relying on researchers and excluding the voices of, you know, actual sex workers. A funny thing happened after my interview with sex worker Bryan Knight and artist Dave Davenport—collaborators on the Velvet Collar comic series depicting the 2015 federal raid on rentboy.com--posted on Tits & Sass, the long-running sex worker blog with the tag line ‘service journalism by and for sex workers.’ Some time after the post ran, I was approached by Harrington Park Press, the book’s publisher, and asked to contribute to their follow-up title, Male Sex Work: Culture & Society, volume 2. I buckled down and wrote a whole damn chapter on the wide breadth of representations of male sex workers in comics, starting with Seven Miles a Second by artist David Wojnarowicz. So yea, we can represent ourselves, and we can also talk about representing ourselves. 

Tits & Sass, currently on hiatus, has also reviewed the work of Canadian stripper and writer Jacqueline Frances, known as Jacq the Stripper. Her crowdfunded graphic novel Striptastic! is a satirical look at the world of strip clubs. The author’s ear for the dark humor in interactions with choice customers, and the banter between strippers, is well-served by her irreverent, stripped-down (pun intended) drawing style. Striptastic! skewers male patrons’ sleaziness and turns the judgey things civilians say (“How can you do this job and call yourself a feminist?”) back on them, all while paying tribute to strippers’ backstage camaraderie and sisterhood.

But back to my assigned topic, representations of male sex workers in comics. There are not that many examples, so I endeavored to consider them all. Seven Miles a Second, which dates back to 1996, is pretty dark. Its narrator/protagonist recounts his origin story as a teen street hustler in New York’s Times Square circa late 70’s. From the outset, desire is entwined with violence and degradation; his first customer goads him into watching a female sex worker service her customer through a peephole, while the narrator is serviced by his customer. In a graphic frame, the woman turns to reveal extensive slash marks on her torso. The teen’s intro to sex work couples voyeurism and violence. In subsequent panels, artist James Romberger illustrates the protagonist’s apocalyptic rage against the cruelties of the universe—in particular the U.S. government’s indifference to gay mens’ suffering during the AIDS epidemic. As a comic book figure, Wojnarowicz’s superpower is his ability to transform suffering into art. 

Seven Miles a Second demonstrates that for sex worker creators, comic books can infuse our narratives with requisite emotional depth and complexity. A level of artistic control is possible, keeping the work and the narratives in our hands. It’s an accessible, character- and action-driven medium for bringing stories based on true experiences to a receptive audience—without risks of disclosure.

Despite the fact that representations of male sex work in comics covers a brief 25-year period, the works I examined track the general migration of sex work from analog spaces like Wojnarowicz’s Times Square to online spaces like rentboy.com and locative apps such as Grindr to the present reality of increasingly scrutinized (and prosecuted) online platforms—  from street trade to SESTA/FOSTA. In subsequent posts, I’ll review Velvet Collar to assess how it tackles the latter period.  

*The book project has since changed publishers, and will be brought out as Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society from Routledge Press (UK) this April.

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Former sex worker and activist Dale Corvino’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including online at the Rumpus and Salon. He won the 2018 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook contest with a trio of short stories; Worker Names was published in 2019. Recent publications include a reflection on Chile’s massive populist uprising and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and an essay on growing constraints on adult online content in Matt Keegan: 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press. He lives in New York City. https://dalecorvino.com

Under Attack: The Fight For Abortions in Poland

In late October of 2020 protestors descended upon the streets of Poland’s largest cities. An affront to both coronavirus restrictions and the brutal action taken by the police, protestors stood up valiantly in cities like Warsaw and Krakow to fight against the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party’s latest attempt to erode the rights of Polish citizens. Voting in a new law that threatens to end abortion access for the majority of Polish women.

Since the fall of the USSR Poland has struggled to define its national identity, and as the idea of “Polishness'' becomes more obscure,  PiS (Law and Justice) have weaponized notions of tradition and identity to ignite their base and join the many other far-right parties that have risen to power across Europe. Initially PiS began, like their neighbours Fidesz in Hungary did, by fear mongering. Their first target were the many refugees fleeing violence and war in the MENA region, then it was the LGBTQ+ community, and finally women. 

Leader and co-founder of the party Jaroslaw Kazcynski has said that refugees are not welcome in Poland, and openly called the LGBTQ+ community “threat” to Polish values, now his sights have turned to the women of Polish society. 

Just a year after winning their first election the party attempted to introduce a total ban on abortion, threatening jail time for both women and doctors as well as committing to investigating any miscarraigges. In this time Kazcynski was quoted as saying “We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, [women] end up giving birth so that the child can be baptised, buried, and have a name.” 

These comments and the proposal of such a complete ban sparked major protest all the way back in 2016, though the world wasn’t paying as much attention at the time. It was in reaction to all of this that Polish women began the Black Monday Protests. The tradition of Black Protests has endured especially in major cities like Warsaw and Krakow since then, but in October of 2020 something broke in Polish politics that reignited the movement and brought international attention to Polish women. 

In their just 5 years of power Law and Justice managed to disturb the balance of the Constitutional Tribunal by appointing judges that they knew would remain loyal to the party. Now, of the 15 judges that sit on this tribunal which is responsible for the judicial review of certain laws 14 are known to be loyal to PiS - a clear affront to the very nature of the tribunal itself. This power is proving to be incredibly dangerous, and it's just one of the reasons there were so many people in attendance at the October 2020 protests. 

Image from foreignpolicy.com

After spending the last 5 years in power uprooting and decimating Poland’s system of checks and balances their previously tabled restrictions on abortions were now possible - a testament to what they can now achieve. Previously abortion was only accessible under 3 conditions - threat to the life of the mother, sexual assault, or fetal abnormality. The bill which passed late last year said that fetal abnormalities, which account for 98% of Poland’s legal abortions, will no longer be a justification.

This reignited the feminist movement and even amid pandemic restrictions thousands and thousands of Poles poured into the streets to defend women’s rights, abortion rights, and the very future of Polish democracy. With 4 more years of their reign over Poland ahead many feminists across the country fear this won’t be the last attack on their rights to come.  

As the movement both for women and against PiS grows, the youth are coming to the forefront. I spoke with one youth activist, Antonina from one of Poland’s more progressive cities in the north, and she told me a bit about her experience. 

Amid the chaos, and despite being just 17, she too felt the weight of this moment in time so she took it upon herself to get involved. She and 4 other student leaders got together and organised a protest in her home city of Gdansk. The protest was illegal because of the current COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings and in setting it up she was well aware that it means she now has a criminal record saying: “It was illegal [...] but honestly whatever they [the police] do it was definitely worth it because the cause is way more important to me than actually having something on my record or in my CV” 

Their first protest saw a turnout of around 3,000 people and after collaborating with another, larger group their turn out hit about 6,000 protestors. While this was all amazing in the end, Antoninia admits setting all of this up was incredibly hard commenting; “We did a lot of work mostly with other organisations because there are lots of NGOs right now that want to do something good [in Poland] but sometimes the communication was hard [...] I mean, we are kids and we didn’t really know what we were doing. It isn’t something we do every day.”

She, like many young women and young people at large, is occupying political spaces in a way that is new and unfamiliar. For years now the youth across the world have been taking up even more space in activism and local politics, and last fall this sentiment made its way to Poland. We are entering a new era of Polish activism, one where the youth are coming to terms with their role as political actors and the situation they have been born into. As Antonina puts it; “the political situation with PiS is deeply complicated and is rooted in Polish culture. The divisions were here way before I was born - it's the country [rural areas]  vs the cities and the old vs the young. It's a similar mechanism that we are seeing in the US and France with Marie Le Pen”

On the 27th of January the government officially made this law, sparking yet again more protest. These moments of massive unrest have to be followed up by further action which the Polish people have clearly committed themselves to doing.* The fight continues to spill over into 2021 and though it began in 2016 there is the same fervour and large scale mobilization. This isn’t PiS’ first attempt to limit women’s rights, it isn’t their first attack on a vulnerable population, and for Antonina and many other young people in her position these are terrifying times. 

She says that this moment back in October was a time of realisation. The protests were the “wake up moment for the youth.” She continues, “this was the first time when many of my friends who were never into politics understood that actually they need to be interested in it, because if you are not interested in politics, the politics will get interested in you.” 

This moment in time is so important, as she and her peers come into adulthood under this protofascist regime it feels that the political landscape of Poland no longer welcomes her. She opened up about her own fears about the changes she is seeing saying: “They have been in power since I was 13, and my family is very political so I have been aware of what is happening since the beginning. [...] I am pretty scared, I don’t want to stay in Poland for my studies but I hope I will come back.[..] It is home but with the current party, the government, and the current situation I just feel scared especially when it comes to abortion rights, womens rights, and the discrimination. It’s really not safe for many people here which is really scary and sad.” 

As these divisions over body politics, reproductive rights, and the nature of human rights as a whole continue to rage on in Poland there are greater questions to be answered about the future of their country. These protests were about preserving women’s rights but they were also about what it means to be Polish today. Will Poland continue, after the next four years, to be a country that calls for conflict and discrimination, or will it be a place where women like Antonina can feel safe? 

These are the questions the Polish people will need to answer for themselves, for the women in their lives, and for the future of their nation. With PiS shifting the very foundation of Poland’s two party system, and its judicial review, and even attempting to sever ties with the European Union some have called into question if this will be a choice for the people to make. Antonina, however, feels confident that Poland’s democracy will continue to thrive long after PiS leaves office.

Though the next election is about 4 years away she is excited to be able to fully voice her opinion as she expressed excitedly, “I really look forward to voting for the first time.” For now though, she, like so many other Polish teenagers, has to rely on activism and education to fight off the worst actions of their current government. 

In a moment in time where the world seems to be in complete political turmoil, the youth continue to be a saving grace and a guiding light towards hope for a better democracy and even more rights not just for women but everyone. 

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Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Why Does a Bad Day for a Man Lead to Deadly Days for Women?

I’m still reeling from what happened in Georgia. Like most millennials, I first got inklings of the news from Twitter, and then from an email or two from friends who were asking if I was okay. I was not okay. Nor were the women who were brutally murdered with no better reason than a man saying he was having a bad day.

The trauma was repeated today, as I saw people posting on Instagram that this wasn’t a hate crime perpetuating white supremacy, but a crime of passion against sex workers because the perpetrator has a sex addiction. As if that made it any better, as if that would make any woman feel safer or less in danger. We all have bad days. Does that mean that men are just one bad day away from murdering innocent women? And should we feel relieved every time they say they’ve had a bad day, but they’ve somehow found the strength to keep themselves from committing violence, from using women as an outlet?

Patriarchy is a system of oppression and violence that puts white, cis-gendered men at the top of a mountain, and keeps them there through misogyny, cruelty, subjugation and censorship. It harms women (women of color in particular) trans and queer folk, gay men, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the harmful stereotype of a ‘strong man.’ It also harms men by forcing them to conform to the idea that having emotions is a sign of weakness, and that being vulnerable is a terrible thing. It’s taught men to burrow their feelings and leaves them incapable of processing pain, trauma, frustration, love, attraction, and more. But that doesn’t mean they don’t cease to exist, it just means they get bottled up and then projected onto other things or people in the form of violence, aggression, sexual assault, jealousy, verbal abuse, physical rage, and more. Patriarchy means that men don’t process their emotions, it just makes women suffer them.

Growing up in America with a mom from Singapore was a special and tough experience. I internalized so many xenophobic notions; and would aggressively reject any sort of attempt by my mom to share her culture with me. I would ask her to make me American food to bring to lunch, and I would get angry and embarrassed with her when people confused her as my nanny, and not my mom. I would ask her to stay in the car, or I wouldn’t invite friends over. I refused to speak Chinese with her, and threw tantrums when Sunday came around, and she wanted me to go to Chinese language school. I rejected all notions that I was mixed, and mourned my slim, hooded eyes, my dark hair, the nose and mouth that would sometimes give me away. As an adult I’ve had to slowly and painfully undo all the internalized fear I had about being half-asian, while also learning more about the ways my mom had navigated a world that was not always kind to her. She’s been scammed because people exploited the fact that English was her second language, sexualized by people who told her they had yellow fever, questioned when she was angry by people who thought ‘Asian women are supposed to be more demure.’ For a year now, she’s had to endure being spit at, mocked, screamed at, and more by people who blamed her for Covid. I’ve heard her apologize to people for her race, for existing. Last summer when the BLM protests were at their highest, she would march proudly with little care packets of water and hand sanitizer to give away. When I asked her why she was marching, a woman who generally isn’t interested in social or political movements, she said “I know what it’s like to be hated for what you look like.”

My mom and I have been mourning for the 8 victims who were murdered while also trying to hold space for the questions that haven’t been answered, such as how was he able to murder more people over an hour after the first attack? How was he captured without harm, with a gun in his possession, when there have been so many POC who’ve been murdered during traffic stops? Why is it acceptable, and understandable to so many that he killed so many to ‘remove the temptation of sex’ from his life?

I am tired of people giving me excuses for the terrible behavior of men; of putting the blame of their actions onto the tired, hunched shoulders of women. Especially women who have done so much work in establishing themselves in places where they have been made to feel unwelcome. Women who have healed through sex work, through building intimacy and sharing healing touches with men who turn around and repay it with violence. I am tired of men having bad days, and instead of doing the work to heal, process trauma, or learn to engage with their emotions, they hurt and kill women. I am tired of the cultural narrative that being vulnerable, of connecting to your sexuality in safe and consensual spaces is a bad thing, and that somehow it’s more manly to take advantage of women, to extract sex from them instead of building the type of relationship in which it can be freely, and willingly, given. I am tired of men because a single bad day led to eight deaths, while for many of us women, almost every day is bad because of the daily interactions we have with men who grope us, catcall us, follow us home, minimize us at work, talk over us, ignore us, gaslight us, and more. I am tired, and I am sad. I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to find the words to express myself in terms slightly more eloquent than these simple words, but I cannot. I do not have the energy, and I know that my mother, the members of the asian community, and women who’ve experienced violence, hate, or both combined, do not have the energy. We are just trying to make it by, because our bad days are so much worse.

Resources in light of this horrific tragedy:

Stop AAPI Hate

Stop AAPI Hate is responsible for researching and responding to racism and xenophobia. They are tracking the surge in violence and sharing information with the wider world.

Red Canary Song

Red Canary Song is a transnational grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers. They are working against police raids and deportations and believe in mutual aid and labor rights regardless of immigration status.

Gofundme's #StopAsianHate Campaign

Gofundme has created a unified fundraiser that supports multiple organizations leading in the AAPI community, including Mekong NYC, Asian Health Services , Oakland Chinatown Ambassadors Program, AAPI Women Lead, and Khmer Girls in Action. You can also support individual victims of violence through Gofundme, such as Noel Quintana, Yong Zheng, and more.

La Impunidad: Disposable Women and Inexcusable Crime

Art by Sofia Merino

On March 7th, 2017 the world awoke to a harrowing tale of 56 young girls burning inside an orphanage in Guatemala City, Guatemala.  A nation already inundated with the burdens of gang violence, the news that broke that day reflected another, more insidious, form of brutality. This corrosive element has lurked in the background of Latinx politics at large since at least the 90s but this overt expression in Guatemala just before Women’s Day. 

After a daring escape from their orphanage, the site of many traumatising acts, the girls were sequestered in a classroom by the police. With no permission to leave, the girls banded together to force the police to free them - they lit a mattress on fire. As the flames engulfed the room the police stood idly by allowing the brutal murder of 41 girls. This is the mark that Guatemala must bear. The blood of 41 young girls mars the hands of those officers. The burns that scar the skin of the living even moreso.

Years later no charges have been levied by the state, and many place the blame on the 15 girls that lived. The question is then begged - did their lives matter? Moreover, did their deaths?

The government made it clear that the answer is no. The weeks following the vicious act saw the government, headed by President Jimmy Morales, attempt to halt public mourning and dissent. These officers acted with impunity, an absolution from their acts granted to them by a justice system and a government entrenched in machismo. 

Impunity has long been seen as a way of legitimizing violence, and when it comes to the violence enacted on women its role is immeasurable. Violence is often baked into the collective consciousness, the violence that we revile, the ones we condone, and the ones we endorse. Whether we think about it or not, we are constantly making allowances for the violence we see everyday, but sometimes the cruelty reaches a fever pitch. 

The world stops, the people question, and the government makes a choice. In Guatemala the choice was clear, we stand with murderers not the murdered. To so boldly express a comfort with the flagrant acts of sadistic violence was a striking message for the thousands of other violent and hateful men that contribute to the nation’s atrocious femicide and gender-based violence rates. 

Day in and day out the country’s justice system fails the thousands of women who have died and the millions who fear that fate. While the nation boasts the 7th highest femicide rates in the world the conviction rate for these crimes is dismal.  

In 2008 the government actively changed the judicial process for the prosecution of crimes against women. At the time the changes were revered as a progressive way forward but just two years later it became apparent that something was amiss. The system that aimed to put women first still left over 99% of murderers unconvicted. 

The question is why are perpetrators being absolved of their crimes? 

Well, the answer is multifaceted. There are first financial barriers to accessing justice. The toll that legal fees take on the most affected communities cannot be neglected, especially in a country like Guatemala where inequality continues to skyrocket at a rate the government can’t possibly control. When women and the communities and families they belong to can’t access the justice system because of financial circumstances, it makes it impossible for justice to be carried out. 

But even in highly publicised cases where lawyers are offering pro bono representation and people are fundraising by the millions, what happens? Where is the disconnect, what is halting justice?

Surely it can’t be the system itself, was specifically designed to benefit and support these women. If not the judicial process it must be the will of the people, it must be some unresolved resentment or conviction that keeps the judges, juries, and spectators from wielding the law for, and not against, the victims. 

This culture of impunity incites crime. The violence, the fear, the impunity, it feels unstoppable because it is. Without punishment crime persists, indefinitely. Moreover, unpunished crime sends a message. These failures of the people, the government, and the system itself create a mosaic of severe injustice that perverts how the public understands crime as a whole.

Suddenly femicide is just something that happens, and again it filters into the background. All these acts we once thought too vile for cable news become movie titles and TV show plotlines.  Yet another facet of life, yet another form of violence to accept, condone - even endorse. 

At the state level this manifests in the impunity we see corroding our nations. In Latin America this results in thousands of unsolved and unmarked cases of femicide. For years, most countries failed to even have a category for these heinous crimes, even now that they do every level of the justice system continues to fail women dying at the expense of male ego and dominance. 

Gender violence is both a mental and physical act. It is about how we think and why we can allow for gender based violence and femicide. 

Mbembe first thought of necropolitics as a reaction to Focoult’s concepts of biopower. Asserting that the state not only necessitates and makes life possible, it also dictates how and who must die. Mbembe wrote about this in the context of late stage colonialism and colonial power, but necropolitics persist in every case of oppression.

In Guatemala, and more broadly with the region, it creates an air of disposability around women. When the state fails to give justice to the thousands of women who have died, it allows for their murder - encourages it even. It clearly says that women are who must die and at the hands of violent machista oppressor is how. 

When those police officers made the active choice to sit idly by and allow those girls to burn to death they were empowered by decades of ignorance and allowances. The government had shown them, long before this moment, that it was comfortable with letting these acts slide. They were, in essence, perfect victims.

Young girls, with no family ties, and no clear futures. Nothing tethering them to the duties and responsibilities that crowd Latin femininity. Even if they had embodied that perfect image of "Una Buena Mujer", their deaths would be simply mourned by the state but not for the right reasons. 

Art by Sofia Merino

All across Latin America, all across the world even, feminity is encumbered by notions of service and labour. At the same time in which labour is becoming increasingly decentralised, deregulated, and disposable. The free market has come to liberate us from basic understandings of human life. This liberation is coming at the cost of the bodies we see piling up in Guatemala and abroad.

Women are coming of age, and girls are coming into existence at a time where their lives have never meant less in the face of the cold unfeeling capitalist patriarchy. The question is not whether they will continue to die, it is whether their deaths will ever mean more than a headline. 

The women on frontlines of this weaponization of machista culture are indigenous women. Existing on the intersection of such oppressed identities makes these women uniquely vulnerable to the boom and bust cycle that modern womanhood entails. 

They are uniquely disposable because Guatemala has built a system that keeps them from participating in political and public life. After the tragic civil war that occured in the early 1960s to mid 1990s, that saw a (US backed) government cease the nation through a coup d’etat many indigenous peoples lost the necessary documents required for political participation. The then government specifically targeted leftist guerillas, indigenous, and rural communities to quell dissent against the neoliberal capitalist system they sought to impose. 

With no way to run for office, vote, or truly be known as “Guatemalan” many indigenous women have fallen between the cracks. Just another way the state signals who must die, the erasure of these people from the Guatemalan identity pushes them out of the scope of community, of protection. That means more than just the formal protections of the state, the police, or the justice system, it extends into the social. The casual ways we attempt to protect and defend those we feel kinship with. It is clear that while the formal war is over, the fight for the extermination of indigenous peoples continues in the hearts of the bands of murderers forming misshapen guerrillas at night. 

The marginalization of these women is necropolitics at work. The death tolls we are seeing climb, even in this time of great isolation, is evidence of its success. 

Disposability is vital to understanding what anti-femicide activism is all about. Whether they are conscious of it or not the women who continue to pour into the streets, petition the government, and violently express their discontent are refuting a falsehood that has travelled the world long before they got here. Refusing any notion or understanding of their humanity that is rooted in temporary service and fleeting male pleasures. They are asserting their personhood in every way they can. 

Indigenous feminists are at the forefront of this movement. An affront to the government, who under president Morales has called the feminist movement a public enemy. An affront to a society that would rather keep quiet. An affront to a culture that would see them dead before they see them as human.  A fierce and formidable declaration that the nation can no longer hope to silence them. That they cannot hold back a wave of budding young feminists from standing up for themselves. Reflecting back to a machista society the very same foreboding assertiveness it has used against them. 

As Pia Flores, a prominent Guatemalan journalist and feminist organizer, said in conversation with ReMezcla “Each of us resists in any way we can, every time we leave our homes”. That resistance is what keeps the state from winning.

Countless feminists movements have made their way to Guatemala, with each one women get one step closer to their future liberation. That oasis on the far side of the desert, what we all hope we will arrive at sooner rather than later. From #MeToo to “El Violador en Tu Camino” the power of global feminist organizing is perhaps best encapsulated by the fight in Guatemala. A mishmash of feminist movements that push the nation the precipice of freedom.

Impunity persists, but so does the resistance. A constant reminder that this fight won’t end until there is justice. Justice for those 41 girls that died and the over 2,500 that came after them. This nation can’t heal without resolution - with reckoning. This is what feminism in Guatemala has to be about, a constant search for reconciliation - an end to the violence.

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Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley