via Mandrika Rupa : Film Maker and Community Worker

Naya Zamana -16mm blown up to 35mm, 1996. Written and directed by Mandrika Rupa

Narrative drama about a working class girl’s silent and sweet rebellion against cultural expectations, resulting in cross gender antics. It has played to over 25 festivals in Europe and the United States. Awards in Italy and Paris.

leetaharding:

across america road trip     dairy queen teen     tucson arizona     leeta harding     2008.

Tracey Moffatt - Tracey Moffatt, First Jobs Series, 2008 - Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Tracey Moffatt - First Jobs, Receptionist 1977 - Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Favorite series by favorite artist.

loveandzombies:

ambird:elephantinthepicture: insecurelobster: missquitecontrary:

Mary Sibande | M. Dash

“Inspired by the explorations of race, gender and sexuality in the work of American artists Kara Walker and Cindy Sherman, and London-based Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, Mary cast her own body in fibreglass and silicone to create Sophie. She then painted her a ‘flat black,’ so that she stands out like a dark and static shadow … Sophie’s eyes are always closed as if in a ‘constant ecstasy of fantasy’ and it’s in her mind that her dress becomes a thing of voluminous Victorian splendour. ‘If she opened her eyes, it would be back to work – cleaning this, dusting that. Her dress would become an ordinary maid’s uniform,’ said Mary.”

cross post my tumblrs because it’s so good.

cassket:

My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (Series Q)
By Amber L.Hollibaugh

Amber L. Hollibaugh is a lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker, and journalist. My Dangerous Desires presents over twenty years of Hollibaugh’s writing, an introduction written especially for this book, and five new essays including “A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home,” “My Dangerous Desires,” and “Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism.”

In looking at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire or how sexuality can be intimately tied to one’s class identity, Hollibaugh fiercely and fearlessly analyzes her own political development as a response to her unique personal history. She explores the concept of labeling and the associated issues of categories such as butch or femme, transgender, bisexual, top or bottom, drag queen, b-girl, or drag king. The volume includes conversations with other writers, such as Deirdre English, Gayle Rubin, Jewelle Gomez, and Cherríe Moraga. From the groundbreaking article “What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With” to the radical “Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist,” Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth. Dorothy Allison’s moving foreword pays tribute to a life lived in struggle by a working-class lesbian who, like herself, refuses to suppress her dangerous desires.

Having informed many of the debates that have become central to gay and lesbian activism, Hollibaugh’s work challenges her readers to speak, write, and record their desires—especially, perhaps, the most dangerous of them—“in order for us all to survive.”

Wonderful political/personal memoir. Michelle Tea, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and some authors at Homofactus Press are more contemporary femme writers, if anyone’s interested.

babylonisburning:

What Women Deserve - Sonya “The Drama” Boom Renee

Culturally-diversified bi-racial girl,
with a small diamond nose-ring
and a pretty smile
poses beside the words: “Women deserve better”.

And I almost let her non-threatening grin begin to
infiltrate my psyche-
till I read the unlikely small-print at the bottom of the ad.
‘Sponsored by the US Secretariate for Pro Life Activities
and the Knights of Columbus’
on a bus, in a city with a population of 563,000.

Four teenage mothers on the bus with me.
One latino woman with three children under three,
and no signs of a daddy.
One sixteen year old black girl,
standing in twenty two degree weather
with only a sweater,
and a bookbag,
and a bassinet, with an infant that ain’t even four weeks yet-

Tell me that yes: Women do deserve better.

Women deserve better
than public transportation rhetoric
from the same people who won’t give that teenage mother
a ride to the next transit.
Won’t let you talk to their kids about safer sex,
and never had to listen as the door slams
behind the man
who adamantly says “that SHIT ain’t his”-
leaving her to wonder how she’ll raise this kid.

Women deserve better than the three hundred dollars
TANF and AFDC will provide that family of three.
Or the six dollar an hour job at KFC
with no benefits for her new baby-
or the college degree she’ll never see,
because you can’t have infants at the university.

Women deserve better
than lip-service paid for by politicians
who have no alternatives to abortion.
Though I’m sure right now
one of their seventeen year old daughters
is sitting in a clinic lobby, sobbing quietly
and anonymously,
praying parents don’t find out-
Or is waiting for mom to pick her up because
research shows that out-of-wedlock childbirth
don’t look good on political polls.
And Sarah ain’t having that.

Women deserve better
than backward governmental policies
that don’t want to pay for welfare for kids,
or healthcare for kids,
or childcare for kids.
Don’t want to pay living wages to working mothers.
Don’t want to make men who only want to be
last night’s lovers
responsible for the semen they lay.
Just like [they] don’t want to pay for shit,
but want to control the woman who’s having it.

Acting outraged at abortion,
when I’m outraged that they want us to believe
that they believe
“Women deserve better”.

The Vatican won’t prosecute pedophile priests,
but I decide I’m not ready for motherhood
and it’s condemnation for me.
These are the same people
who won’t support national condom distribution
to prevent teenage pregnancy—

But women deserve better.

Women deserve better than back-alley surgeries
that leave our wombs barren and empty.
Deserve better than organizations bearing the name
of land-stealing, racist, rapists
funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains
with no money to give these women—
While balding, middle-aged white men
tell us what to do with our bodies,
while they wage wars and kill other people’s babies.

So maybe,
Women deserve better than propaganda and lies
to get into office.
Propaganda and lies
to get into panties,
to get out of court,
to get out of paying child-support.

Get the fuck out of our decisions
and give us back our VOICE.

Women do deserve better.

Women deserve choice.

Amazing.