• • Body Politics
  • Recommended Reading
  • Trans-

  Recommended Reading: A bra that fits me - A Critique of Chrysalis Lingerie’s May 1st Launch

  May 10, 2013 • Julia Horel

  Teagan Widmer writes at Interrupt Mag about some major issues with Chrysalis Lingerie‘s launch.

  I was super excited about Chrysalis Lingerie’s new line of lingerie that debuted in their online store this week. The company boasts garments created by trans women and for trans women. Their launch has been delayed multiple, but now it was finally coming to a mailbox near you. So when I saw a post on my Tumblr dashboard saying that their store was finally open, I eagerly clicked the link for the store. My jaw subsequently hit the floor, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

  The prices of the garments are high, which is a big problem:

  Most trans women don’t have that kind of earning power thanks to the intersection of transmysogny and sexism (and often racism since there are many trans women who are also women of color).

  And on top of that:

  Upon further examination of the new shop, I came to an even more startling, frustrating, and disturbing realization. Even if I had the money to drop on a beautiful brand-new Chrysalis bra, I wouldn’t be able to buy one that actually fits me.

  Read Teagan’s excellent critique in its entirety here.
  

• • Decolonizing
  • Indigenous
  • Recommended Reading
  • Reproductive Justice

  Recommended Reading: Mothering Resistance and Reclamation—Indigenous Mamas

  May 9, 2013 • Guest Blogger

  Erin Konsmo writes at Reproductive Justice Blog:

  The Native Youth Sexual Health Network celebrates all Indigenous mamas and the many forms in which they come, as well as the critical everyday, on-the-ground work they do for our families, communities, and nations.

  To read the blog: http://bit.ly/11VtnTh

  

  
  

• • Body Politics
  • Recommended Reading

  Ms. Fit Magazine: “Real World Feminist Fitness”

  May 1, 2013 • Naz Afsahi

  Over the last 15 months I have been on a journey of fitness. I was walking down the street on a cold January morning and realized that I needed to make a change. Since that morning, I have joined a gym, taken classes and began practicing yoga. I’ve devoured the fitness magazines at my local public library and looked up various stretches to release my tight hip flexors and techniques to strengthen my rotator cuffs. Most importantly, I have begun the process of internalizing the amazing things my body can do alongside the importance of what my mind can do. As well, I have been working on my emotional and mental well being, because fitness is about so much more than muscle mass.

  If you are looking for a new magazine that emphasizes these various facets of fitness, check out Ms. Fit. With two issues out already, Ms. Fit is still a young publication, but there are some great articles and testimonials to check out. The site is easy to maneuver, and I imagine you will like their content if you are looking for narratives about personal fitness and health journeys alongside updates about professional athletes.

  Unlike traditional health and fitness magazines you can pick up at a your location chain bookstore, the emphasis by Ms. Fit is less on the specific techniques of workouts, or the gym equipment needed in order to be “fit”. Rather, the content focuses on maintaining an overall sense of fitness in every part of your being. Ms. Fit’s content defines fitness as being about physical health, sexual health and emotional health, as well as, eating healthy and learning to consume in an earth conscious manner with delicious sounding vegan and vegetarian recipes.

  Another positive facet of Ms. Fit is that the site features pictures that reflect a variety of body types, abilities, shapes and colours. And if you like (and since you are on Shameless, I hope you already do!) speaking about our bodies, our sexual reproductive rights, and our pleasure in a possible and non-heteronormative light, then you might enjoy Ms. Fit.

  With future issues, I do hope to see more pieces that deal with one’s mental health and issues that touch on trans-fitness [I admit I am still making my way through both issues, so it is possible I missed some pieces that touch on these issues].

  Check out the Ms. Fit Manifesto here.

• • Activist Report
  • Anti-violence
  • Indigenous
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Police (In)Justice: Responding Together to Change the Story

  March 4, 2013 • Julia Horel

  From the Native Youth Sexual Health Network:

  We validate the many stories we’ve heard from families about a lack of police responsiveness and/or dehumanizing treatment directed at the missing woman themself, their family or friends. Families have expressed frustration and anguish of being ignored when they presented evidence countering police theories. For instance, pointing out that their loved ones disappeared without taking their wallet, clothes, or cell phone, told no one of their plans, left without saying goodbye, and have not heard from for months, years, and decades in some cases. When the police don’t view our loved ones’ disappearances are as a cause for alarm that leaves it up to families and allies to take on the role of investigating despite the shock we are experiencing.

  It is unacceptable and trauma-inducing when families are put in a position of having to circulate their own posters/information, raise money for rewards or to hire private investigators and lawyers, coordinate their own searches, set up tip-lines, follow-up on leads, or speak to the media, or mobilize community without supports in place. It is likewise problematic and harmful that families who do not have the capacity to undertake this overwhelming and expensive process are unable to advocate on behalf of their loved ones.

  These accounts illuminate a deeply complicated relationship with police that’s been shaped by colonial stereotypes that dehumanize Indigenous women and label Indigenous peoples as needing to be controlled, managed, and assimilated. Some families are reluctant to speak out when problems with police arise, out of fear of having it reflect back on the investigation and how it proceeds (or doesn’t).

  Read the entire statement here (PDF link) and check out the NYSHN’s resource list:

  INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
  Stop Law Enforcement Violence Toolkit

  Police Violence Against Native Women and Native Trans & Two Spirit People

  What Their Stories Tell Us: Research Findings from the Sisters in Spirit Initiative
  
  No More Stolen Sisters

  Streetwise and Safe
  Criminal In/Justice Map - working through the criminal in/justice system

  Young Women’s Empowerment Project
  “Street Youth Bill of Rights”

• • Activist Report
  • Recommended Reading
  • Sexuality

  [HIGHLY] Recommended listening: Jessica Danforth on Jaclyn Friedman’s FWF

  January 22, 2013 • Julia Horel

  I’m late to the party on listening to Jaclyn Friedman’s awesome podcast, Fucking While Feminist. I first listened last week when I saw her tweet that she had interviewed most excellent fat and sexuality activist Hanne Blank, and after listening to that interview (also great), I checked the archives and downloaded a few other podcasts I wanted to listen to.

  While on a slow, freezing, snowy commute to work this morning, I listened to Jaclyn’s interview with Jessica Danforth, founder and executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network. I’ve known Jess for almost 5 years, and I learn something from her every time she speaks. I say this because I want to emphasize that I am familiar with Jess’s work — and yet, this interview was so mind-blowing to me that I felt like it was the first time I’d heard her speak. This interview includes discussion of sexual health and reproductive justice, colonialism, environment violence, and more.

  In other words: LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST.

  I regret to say there is no transcription for the podcast. If any readers wish to transcribe it or any of her podcasts, I am sure Jaclyn would welcome the offer if you get in touch with her.

• • Gender
  • Queeriosities
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: In Transition (Ryerson Review of Journalism)

  January 7, 2013 • Julia Horel

  When even Canada’s top LGBT publication struggles to find the right words, will journalists ever accurately reflect the complexities within the trans community?

  The Ryerson Review of Journalism has a piece up about Elisha Lim, friend of Shameless, and their struggle to have their preferred pronouns used in queer media:

  “There was this one moment where I said I prefer the pronoun ‘they,’” Lim says. “It was kind of my shaky first attempt so I wasn’t too confident about it, and the interviewer sort of laughed and said, ‘We’re not going to use that. But anyway what about…?’ I walked away after the interview and thought, ‘Now wait just one minute, I think that I should be mad!’”

  The article also includes Shameless cartoonist Coco Riot:

  Riot, a Toronto-based visual artist and cartoonist for Shameless magazine, is glad the community made its disappointment known. Having faced similar constraints speaking to the Montreal Gazette and winning an apology from the newspaper for its pronoun misuse, Riot knew “they” was a pronoun worth fighting for—especially at an LGBT publication.

  Check out the whole article here.

• • All About Shameless
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended reading: Caitlin at the Mamafesto

  October 29, 2012 • Julia Horel

  Our own front-of-book editor, Caitlin Blennerhassett, is featured [being awesome] in an interview at the Mamafesto:

  My feminism is always changing, as I engage more with the literature, and as I experience living in different communities around the country. My feminism changed radically when I took a class in my Masters degree where we read Peggy McIntosh’s famous essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack” and many other relevant pieces like John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me.” Acknowledging my own privilege and racism and doing everything I can to counter those racist and colonialst identities is a huge part of my feminism now. I was born in Nova Scotia but grew up in northern Canada, in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It is only since beginning my feminist journey that I was able to grapple with the huge power differential that existed between many of my peers and I.

  Check out the whole thing here.
  

• • Body Politics
  • Race and Racism
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Viewing: It Gets Fatter

  August 29, 2012 • Julia Horel

  It Gets Fatter is a project started by three self-identified fat people of colour, with the intent of building a dialogue around being fat people of colour in a fatphobic world, eating together and being in safe spaces together.

  “… maybe it could be a project, like It Gets Better, but actually better, because people of colour are doing it.”

  They have so far posted an introductory video that can be found here, and a version with subtitles here.

  “I think for me, it’s really important to be around people who look like me and think the same way I do, but also just to feel safe as a fat person, safe being visible, safe eating in public, and not feel pressured to have body shame or like I need to lose weight, or need to talk about losing weight, or feel like I always have to work on what I look like because I’m fat.”

  There is a specific call for participation at the end of the video:

  “I hope that if people want to upload things, videos or text or whatever themselves, too, that would rule.”

• • Race and Racism
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Hate Crimes Always Have A Logic: On The Oak Creek Gurudwara Shootings

  August 7, 2012 • Julia Horel

  Highly recommended piece from the amazing Harsha Walia over at Racialicious.

  While these murders were abhorrent, they were not ‘senseless’. The ad nauseaum suggestion that the killings were senseless attempts to construct the shooting as random and without logic, when in fact racist hate crimes operate through the very deliberate and precise logic of white supremacy.

  White supremacy, as a dominant and dominating structuring, actually necessitates and relies on a discourse that suggests that hate crimes are random. Otherwise, whites might just have to start racially profiling all other young and middle-aged white men at airports or who are walking while white. Whites might have to analyze what young white children are being taught about in schools and in their homes about privilege and entitlement. Whites might have to own up to and seek to repair the legacy of racialized empire, imperialism, and settler-colonialism that has devastated and continues to destroy the lives and lands of millions of people across the globe.

  Read the whole thing here.

• • Race and Racism
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: An Ideological Mess or: How I Learned to Not Stop Worrying and Still Love Rock Climbing

  May 22, 2012 • Julia Horel

  This piece by Narinda Heng was cross-posted at Girls Like Giants and Racialicious. Narinda discusses navigating gender, class, sexual orientation and race as a low-income, queer Southeast Asian woman involved in rock climbing, and how while discussions are happening in some spaces, others in the climbing community still prefer to think of climbing as a place where one can leave one’s identities at the door:

  … So I understand why Guidoprincess said this [in a comment thread]:

  I think the reason many people, including myself, find this offensive is that we turn to climbing exactly to avoid worthless BS like this. While many other public forums are full of this “racial landscape navigation” nonsense, climbing is a pure activity where everyone can just chill the f-ck out.

  The thing is, for me, it’s not nonsense. I navigate my race/sex/class everywhere, all the time, and telling me to “chill the f-ck out” is like telling me to perform a lobotomy on myself. I can’t “chill the f-ck out” because there’s a lot more in play when I’m trying to get into the “pure” part of the activity.

  Check out the full post at Girls Like Giants or Racialicious.

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