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Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene

Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene is an Ijaw and Urhobo Nigerian dyke performance activist, poet, dancer, essayist, playwright, actress, video blogger and mixed media visual artist who was born with a mouth full of dynamite and sugarcane. She uses her poetry to chisel a verbal sculpture of her soul for listeners while addressing issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, war, imperialism, love, self-esteem and family. Etaghene has self-published three collections of poetry, toured nationally and performed in over 30 u.s. cities. She was interviewed by and was a Contributing Writer to None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa, a sound documentary project that collects the stories of QLGBT Africans from the African Continent and the Diaspora. She has toured nationally with her multi-media one-woman show, Volcano’s Birthright{s}. Etaghene is a mixed-media visual artist who has produced 4 solo art exhibitions. In June 2012, Etaghene founded Sugarcane, an LGBTQ Of Color writing workshop based in the principles of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People.

Etaghene has written and directed 2 poem videos (“The First Time” [2010] and “i deserve somebody” [2011]) that marry film, poetry and music. Etaghene has self-published 3 chapbooks of poetry: afrocrown: fierce poetry (2000),write or die (2004) and tongue twisted transcontinental sista (2006.) She independently released an album of poetry and music entitled liberty avenue, nigeria, usa (2004.) She has shared stages with Amina Baraka, Bonfire Madigan, Sharon Bridgforth, Staceyann Chin, climbing poeTree, Invincible, DJ Kuttin Kandi, Lenelle Moïse, DJ Moni, Queen GodIs, Ongina Ryan, Hanifah Walidah & innumerable other brilliant magic-makers.

Ugandan Lesbian Kasha Nabagesera Honored [Autostraddle]

Last week Ugandan lesbian activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera was awarded the 2011 Martin Ennals Human Rights Defenders Award, second only to the Nobel Peace Prize in prestige and the premiere award in human rights work.

Nabagesera runs the organization Freedom and Roam Uganda established in 2003 to “lobby and press for the recognition of same sex relationships, especially lesbians in Uganda and thereby attain full equal rights and freedom in all aspects of life.” Working for gay rights and acceptance in a country where homosexuality is illegal and  on a continent where this is the case in nearly 40 countries is clearly commendable.

FULL ARTICLE

Violent Attacks On Transgender People Raise Alarm [NPR]

"We have become the target, and someone has to be responsible for it,"
Ruby Corado says. "In my opinion, it really starts with the accountability of
those that are out there to protect us."

A series of shootings and violent attacks put Washington, D.C.'s transgender community on edge this summer. Police hesitate to call the attacks hate crimes, but they've stepped up their patrols. Still, the transgender community is demanding more action.

It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Dix Street in northeast Washington. The neighborhood is a popular gathering place for transgender women, but tensions arose when Lashai Mclean, 23, was murdered here in late July.

Days after the shooting, transgender activists Earline Budd and Ruby Corado held a vigil for Mclean. Today marks the first time they've returned to the site since then — and they are shocked by what they see.

The singed and severed legs of a teddy bear are strewn across the street, and floral bouquets are charred black. Corado and Budd find that the makeshift memorial they had left behind has been torched.

Budd sees the vandalism as an omen.

"It was a clear message to us that we're not welcome, and that what happened to Lashai could happen to any of us," she says.

Days after Mclean's murder, another transgender woman was shot, just one block away.

And on Aug. 26, an off-duty police officer stood on the hood of a car and shot through its windshield, hitting two transgender women and a male friend, wounding one critically. The officer is a 20-year veteran of the city's police force and is currently in jail, awaiting trial.

FULL ARTICLE

via Fuck Yeah, Queer Vintage

Also

Speaking of Girls and Zines...

To all my London same-gender-loving ladies, an art show is underway: Girls+Zines at Tatty Devine.

Wednesday 3rd August - Saturday 3rd September

Spanning a wide range of publications featuring anything from offbeat illustrations and collage to heartfelt musings and humorous revelations, Girls + Zines celebrates the originality of female zinesters. Browse our pop-up zine library while sitting on beanbags, and bring your own publications to display or swap at the in-store zine exchange!

Girl Crush

 

Girl Crush is a brand-new zine (literally, it drops this week) that celebrates the complex world of platonic girl-on-girl crushing. Helmed by two ladies rather worthy of girl-crushes themselves (Jenna Wortham is a reporter for The New York Times, Thessaly La Force is fresh off a plum gig at The Paris Review), its M.O. is the type of universal fascination that all women and girls feel about at least one other member of their gender. The zine was born from a discussion about these crushes on rad ladies like Joan Didion and Anna Karina via essays and even suggested recipes and playlists. Featuring work from the likes of Jennifer Egan, Leanne Shapton, and Mary H.K. Choi—among so many others—Girl Crush is instantly relatable and just a straight-up good read. The zine is available online for $10. 

So worth the $10... Follow them on Tumblr.

For a list of other cool, new zines to drop, check out this article from Refinery29.

NO! The Rape Documentary

More Here

SLDN Releases Post-DADT Service Guide [Care2]

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) this week released a legal guide for LGBTs to help them navigate the landscape of the post-DADT repeal environment.

The guide, “Freedom to Serve: The Definitive Guide to LGBT Military Service,” is designed to offer a comprehensive overview of laws and policies relating to military service that may be of interest to LGBT servicemembers, as well as their friends and family.

“The information contained in this legal guide will help service members, prospective service members, their families, and friends make informed decisions about how to serve successfully as we move beyond ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ It will also assist them in understanding how to protect themselves when necessary and how to respond if they are targeted in any way for their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” said SLDN Legal Director David McKean.

FULL ARTICLE 

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And I have to ask, what is going to be done to acclimate heterosexual service members into a DATD-repealed environment to further protect LGBTQ service members?

Brownie Points: DC Comics [Autostraddle]

Batwoman is a Lesbian: DC Comics' Gay Superheroes Stepping Out of the Subtext and Into the Light

Last June, DC Comics announced that they were starting over. Starting over at number 1. 52 all-new #1 issues will be released in September, complete with updated characters, costumes, and origins. An entire new universe, with old icons and a new concept.

And the new DC Comics universe, they promised, would be hella gay.

YES!

The Gender Ambiguity of Lisbeth Salander: Third-Wave Feminist Hero? [Dissent Magazine]

by Judith Lorber

STIEG LARSSON’S Millennium trilogy describes a series of crimes that involve the violent abuse of women, and it also exposes not-so-fictional Swedish corporate and state crimes. But the novels are named, in English, for Lisbeth Salander, the “girl who,” and the second and third books in the trilogy in particular, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, are her story. Salander seems to be the source of the trilogy’s popularity. But why is she so interesting? I think that it’s her gender ambiguity that pulls in different readers, women and men, young and old. I don’t mean an androgyny of masculine and feminine traits, but a mix of attributes within her identity as a woman. She is both victim and avenger, abused child and iconoclastic rebel, punky teen in appearance and competent woman in behavior. 

Feminists might best describe Salander as a third-waver. She often decides how she will look for shock value—punk clothes, piercings, tattoos, bizarrely cut and dyed hair. She has bisexual relationships, sex with friends in non-exclusive relationships, recreational sex. As in third-wave “girlie culture,” she revels in sexual openness, outrageous gender self-presentations, and emotional coolness. But Salander never identifies as a feminist, nor does she use her (criminally acquired) wealth or her computer skills for any institutionalized activism. Third-wave feminists fight against restrictions on procreative choice and against racism, homophobia, and economic inequalities. By contrast, Salander’s personal, physical battle is against violent, sadistic men; her political battles, where she uses her investigative and hacking abilities, are against sex trafficking and international crime. She fights alone, mostly to defend herself or to get revenge on those who have harmed her. Once or twice, she fights for others (Erika Berger, when she is being cyber-stalked, and Mikael Blomkvist, to restore his journalistic reputation). But she belongs to no movement.

FULL ARTICLE

Marimacho BK

 

Marimacho is a masculine clothing line for female and transgender bodies. They are the first fashion house to offer a full seasonal line of masculine clothes tailored for women and transmen. At first, I was mad upset cause it's been my dream to start a fashion line just like this for years now. But then I got over it. A gap in the market that I've been dying to see filled is finally being filled. Pretty dope!

Queer Latinas Have Specific Healthcare Needs, This Billboard Isn’t One of Them [Autostraddle]

There could be a lot of effective ways to say this, but I’m just going to go the quick route: my name is Carmen Rios, I’m Latina, and I’m a lesbian. 

As a feminist, I’ve become aware of how my unique identity impacts my experiences. It’s pretty much a no-brainer that Latina women face challenges unique to the intersection of race and gender that they live at, or at least it should be by now. But what happens when you throw in the ‘LBT?’ Or, really, what happens when it comes to sex at all?

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) recently released an issue brief on sexual health and LGBTQ Latinas. The outlook was not too bright: the conclusion of the brief was, pretty much, that more research on the unique needs of Latina women on a whole is needed to address their unique sexual health needs. But what the brief also reveals is a handful of problems that LBT Latinas are facing: provider bias and limited access to quality health care, a lack of accommodations for queer women and non-English speakers in health care, higher rates of cervical cancer, and lower rates of regular care for lesbian Latinas related to sexual health. 

The report, LGBTQ Latin@s and Reproductive Justice, can be found in full on the NLIRH website. It also explored how trans women face problems related to the gendering of health services and employment discrimination, both having an ugly impact on the opportunity to receive quality health care.

FULL ARTICLE

In African Women’s Soccer, Homophobia Remains an Obstacle [NYTimes]

Shortly before she was hired in 2009 as the first female coach of Nigeria’s powerful women’s national soccer team, Eucharia Uche said at a seminar that she was troubled by the presence of lesbians on the squad, calling it a "worrisome experience."

Over the past two years, as Nigeria progressed toward the Women’s World Cup, which begins Sunday in Germany, Uche said that she has used religion in an attempt to rid her team of homosexual behavior, which she termed a "dirty issue," and "spiritually, morally very wrong."

FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, states as part of its mission a desire to use the game in "overcoming social and cultural obstacles for women with the ultimate aim of improving women’s standing in society." But the story of Nigeria’s Super Falcons illustrates the cultural obstacles that remain for many African women who play soccer decades after more assertive efforts at inclusivity occurred in places like the United States, Germany, Norway, Sweden and more recently in Brazil.

Uche said she had never witnessed her own players participating in homosexual activity. Instead, she said that she had relied on rumors, speculation and news media accounts to form her belief that lesbian behavior had been common in the Nigerian team.

"When rumors are strong, you are bound to believe it is happening," Uche, 38, said in a telephone interview from Nigeria’s World Cup training camp in Saalfelden, Austria.

In March, Uche made similar remarks to The Daily Sun newspaper of Nigeria. The newspaper also quoted a former technical assistant for the country’s soccer federation, James Peters, saying that he had removed some players from Nigeria’s women’s team last year, "not because they were not good players, but because they were lesbians."

FULL ARTICLE

Provincetown's not safe for black lesbians

Note: It's always hard for me to publicly acknowledge violence committed by black men. It's hard because the actions of the few always reflect on the many. It's hard because people all too often take the actions of one black man and project it onto all of them. Their faces are constantly associated with violence and sexual aggression. At the same time, it's a transgression not to loudly acknowledge the experiences of my sisters and to confront problems and injustices on their behalf. Rev. Irene Monroe talks of this in her article "Provincetown's not safe for black lesbians." See below:

by Rev. Irene Monroe

At the tip of Cape Cod is the LGBTQ-friendly haven Provincetown, fondly called P-town, and known as the best LGBTQ summer resort on the East Coast.

Of late, more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people of color (POC) have not only begun vacationing in P-town, but we have also begun holding POC events.

For the past several years now, the "Women of Color Weekend" brings hundreds of us LBT sisters of color to P-town from all across the country.

And it is the one time of the year many of us make the journey to P-town, anticipating that we will feel safe enough, for a few days, to let down our guard.

But the sexual and homophobic harassment many of us LBT sisters endure from many of our heterosexual brothers of African descent back home in our communities, or imported from one of the Caribbean Islands has, too, become an inescapably reality at P-town.

"A few years back I sent a letter about this very subject...and I received an email from the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce, instructing me to get in touch with them and the police if this happens again...well, it has happened again and again," Ife Franklin of Roxbury, MA wrote me.

Franklin and her wife were at "Women of Color Weekend 2011," and she and several sisters of color were continually harassed.

"Now I will take ownership...I have not called the police or contacted the town Chamber.Why? Well, here is where this gets a little sticky for me...So, if I call and say 'there are some Black men harassing me' will they round up ALL of the Black men? Even the ones that have done nothing wrong?"

Issues of race, gender identity, and sexual orientation trigger a particular type of violence against people of color that cannot afford to go unreported. Not reporting what is going on with LGBTQ people of color not only subjects us to constant violence that goes unchecked, but it also puts the larger queer culture at risk.

In the now defunct Boston LGBTQ newspaper In Newsweekly Will Coons in 2007 expressed in his "Letter to the Editor" his distress with the harassment. "I'm well aware of the white man's burden and the need to be open and sensitive to historical injustices, but the flip side works as well: are these Jamaican men sensitive to, aware of, and respectful of the gay men who vacation here? My impression over the past ten years is that most of them are not and I distinctly feel uncomfortable in their presence."

The lack of reporting about these types of harassment and assaults from LGBTQ people of color is for two reasons -- both dealing with race.

FULL ARTICLE

Video Interview with Tom MacMaster [Colorlines]

He even apologizes in a privileged way. Ugh! GREAT article by Akiba Solomon on Colorlines. Have a read.

A Nepalese Tea Garden Empowering Women [Rishi Tea]

As a tea lover/drinker, I love reading stories from various U.S. based tea vendors. For a list of my favorite online vendors, see post "Chai Season." But in even more exciting news, Rishi Tea is now offering a Nepalese black tea from a tea garden that employs and supports women equally to men. Read on:

"We at Rishi Tea have always had a strong connection with our partners at origin. Nurturing that connection is important to us which is why we have worked hard to produce and purchase Fair Trade Certified™ teas. This passion is always with us as we look for new and exciting teas.

That being said, we would like to introduce a new tea and partner to you. Himalayan First Flush, Black Tea from the Jun Chayabari Tea Garden boutique estate is a tasty way for us to introduce you to Nepalese teas and bring you other ways to connect with and help tea growers around the world. The Jun Chiyabari Tea Garden is very unique in that it empowers women in an underdeveloped country. The women that work for this tea garden have the same opportunity and equal pay as the men that work there not only in the fields but also in the factory and management.

One success story is of Kalpana Rai. She is the record keeper, a supervisory position at the tea garden, and is currently enrolled in school to earn her masters degree. This speaks volumes of the Jun Chayabari Tea Garden and their breaking of the patriarchal mold. You can read more about this inspiring empowerment by going to the Nepal First Flush Himalayan Orange product page and following the link to an article by the Nepal Times.

We not only have chosen Jun Chiyabari for their superb quality, but also because they are socially conscious. Whether you are a fan of great quality teas, social consciousness, or both, we encourage you to try this tea.

Himalayan First Flush, Black Tea has a beautiful, light golden-orange liquor and flavors of apricot, peach, honeysuckle and wildflower honey with a lingering aftertaste and full aroma."

Hoozah! Happy Drinking!

Pariah

FINALLY!

Men Are Not Hardwired for Infidelity: Why Does Pop Culture Insist on Biological Differences Between the Sexes? [AlterNet]

Grasping after certainty about gender roles has fostered some bad science and stereotyping that harms both sexes.


Type "men" and "hardwired" into Google and you tap into a wonderfully absurd catalogue of assertions about male behaviour. Men are "hardwired" to cheat, ignore their wives, suspect infidelity, overspend, fail, love money, pursue women and achieve supremacy in the workplace. Meanwhile, women are "hardwired" to worry about their weight and dump cheaters. All include the magic phrase "scientific studies show". It's a snapshot of how science is being used and abused to legitimise gender stereotypes. It would be laughable if it didn't signify how a form of biological determinism -- the claim that differences between men and women have a basis in innate biological characteristics -- has re-emerged and acquired an astonishing popular currency.


[...]


A tiny number of tests show sex differences. One of these (famously used to argue that men are better at engineering and other sciences) is a test comparing two shapes. Men are slightly more likely to use a method known as mental rotation, despite it being rather less efficient. Overall, in 45 items in the test, only three show sex difference, two of them favour girls and only this aspect of mental rotation favours boys. Spelke is astonished as to why this slight difference favouring boys has attracted such disproportionate attention.


FULL ARTICLE

Rep. Barney Frank Putting the T in LGBT Rights [Pam's House Blend]

via Pam's House Blend

Congressman Barney Frank today released his testimony in favor of a Massachusetts bill which would extend legal protections which now cover gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals to also include transgender people.  The testimony was presented in writing to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary, which is holding a hearing on the legislation today.

In his testimony, Frank draws parallels between struggles to achieve equal rights for transgender individuals and earlier battles for gay rights.  In 1973, when Frank was closeted gay man and a state representative in the Massachusetts legislature, he introduced the first gay rights bill in Massachusetts history.  The bill was defeated that year but Frank introduced it every session until he left the legislature.  It was defeated every time.  The first gay rights bill was finally passed in Massachusetts in 1989, when Frank was already a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In his testimony, Frank writes that early critics of gay rights, who predicted widespread social disruption, were proven by history to have been wrong - and that those who currently argue against similar rights for transgender people also be likely to be proven wrong.  Furthermore, he states, transgender people "seek no special privilege; they have no wish to disrupt anybody else's lives; they only want to be able to live their own with a degree of freedom from unfair restrictions or hurtful actions by others."

In the US Congress, Frank has not only been the leading advocate of equal rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, but has also worked to win those rights for transgender people.  In 2009, he was a major force behind the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S.909).  Also in 2009, he introduced a "fully-inclusive" Employment Non-Discrimination which would extend employment protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.  After the bill failed to garner enough support to guarantee passage in 2010, Frank introduced the same legislation in 2011. The bill already has 142 cosponsors.

Frank concludes his written testimony stating that:

"I very much hope that the Commonwealth will once again show its aversion to prejudice and its compassion for people who have been its victims, and extend to people who are transgender the same legal rights that the rest of us now enjoy."