Alix Olson~ Slam poetry

Bits of spoken word according to Alix Olson

The Binary

This is a youtube video, not compiled by me, but by an individual who translates the frustration and the sillyness behind the gender dichotomies into a clip voiced spliced with the voices of Alix Olson and Andrea Gibson.

Links for amusement

Are you a genuine queer?
http://www.queerbychoice.com/palmistry.html

On ways to use the word queer(not exactly pc):
http://members.aol.com/qbchoice/PC.html

Queer according to Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer

Technological Frustration

*rants*

I am having such a hard time getting a powerpoint from Microsoft uploaded onto the internet and onto this site. I really think the pictures allow a good visual representation(albet scattered) of how my thinking process is proceeding. Yet, I can't make it work. Somedays I love technology, and some days I want to break my computer.

I try again. I fail. Yet, all great successes basked on the molding, dying back of their sisters in failure. What the fuck am I trying to be poetic about? ugh. *throws something at the computer and rants about gender shit somewhere else*

I'll go be gay elsewhere.

Why do I use blogger.com? Because google, which also own's blogger.com, has proven it will stand up to the government when the government begins digging into people's backgrounds. A "safe zone" on the internet. Still, I have so many frustrations with the way blogger is beign run and the difficulty to use it. *goes and bugs the tech people*

I want to be able to do this on my blog, much in the same way I can do it through wordpress.com

Separate links(for research part of project) *

Categories within the blog.
-place for brainstorming(aka blogging)
-place for formal proposal thoughts
-book review/notes from research
-works cited/sourcing page

website?
A way to keep the process accessible, academic and fun.
-Inappropriate Quote page(needs a disclaimer)

*People are more likely to click and read something if it’s shorter(kept to a couple of pages)

browsing through the book store

Why, why, why, WHY is it so effing difficult to find a book on sustainability/environmental science/ environmental justice written by a woman?! I am in Portland, OR and I just spent hours in Powells searching for books for this project. As difficult as it was to find books dealing sustainable ag or EJ that wasn't white washed it was even more difficult to find anything authored or coauthored by a woman. It seems counter productive to research the queering of EJ from sources that represent the model I am trying to get away from.

Yes, I know this rant is nothing new. Women, specifically women of color and indigenous women are severely underrepresented in the land of published work. Maybe it was just me being hopeful, but I KNOW that the majority of the work on this issue is not done by white men.

I did find some helpful books despite this frustration.

Story Earth: Native Voices on the Environment, Compiled by Inter Press Service

From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering, and John Page

Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South, By Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez- Alier

From Guerilla Gardening to Edible Lawns

These are amazing. Click on each one then figure out a way to get all of the books in your hands. Then read them and start planting.

Food Not Lawns, By H.C. Flores
Here is the official website

Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, By David Tracey

earth user's guide to Permaculture 2nd ed, By Rosemary Morrow

On your mark. Get set. GO!!!

Oppression Poetry

The last time I felt her rich darkness between my fingers
Somewhere else, metal yellow talons scraped clean the skin from her bones.
Bones piled and cataloged from a people who never lived and therefore couldn’t die.
Patches rubbed raw and gray, filled with lead and the footprints of men’s feet
The clutter and drainage of their leavings- cum and go- after desire.
Days go by, and she leaves in the pencil thin shards, bits of violence
From the fathers, of the sons, of the toddlers who’ll grow up dreaming of raping her
Not for her lush curves, fertile valleys, or smooth landscape
But for the interchangeability and thus inherent ownership displayed by their paradise.
Her tears clog and catch in sticks and leaves, Screaming-She echoes off deaf ears
Ears stopped up with the decay of previously growing things
Green algae and frogs seem to be the only thing moving against or under her skin.
Packed under the years of bile and toxins left decomposing against
What used to be hers. Nothing has been hers, or even remotely female since the last
How many? She can’t remember how many it’s been, or how long she’s just been lying,
Dying, in a pile of waste. Unable to get back up after the last explosion.
As my fingers sink deep into the soil, less fertile, less alive
I wonder what it would be like to be able to remember the way she shone
Before the sun set, merely a sparkle-wink, on the lives of her children.

After Class Insights and Resulting Situation

class contributations:
-facebook
-myspace
-posters
-chalk
-demonstration in an attempt to get on DE front page
-paper with website link only on it in all the classrooms
(ask her style)
-flood site through all our own networks, creating some extra google juice
-get linked through from everywhere (all tomatoes and my blogs, and all our buddies blogs)

any other fabulous ideas? We have a situation needing a solution, we want to be on the first page of google and create dialoge on our blog. Anybody want to help?

Power systems within Genderplay

Power Systems within my topic:
Nationalism
Sexism
Classism
Racism
Proper Gender Roles vs. Deviance

Racism comes into play actually with the whitewash(prevalence of white individuals I’m researching) of my current research. If white is a race, and everything about the patriarchy has attempted to deny white as a race, then the easy access to white resources is a direct form of educational racism. Also, racism provides a barrier between myself and individuals of color engaged in gender play, because of my own social status as a white lesbian. I have easy access to numerous other white lesbians, and a few chicana lesbians, some lesbians of mixed-ethnicities, but not on as large of a scale as the white lesbians. The status of lesbian also ties back into sexism, b/c my access is limited to mostly women. My personal sources from my own connections are limited to one white FTM, one white MTF, and two authors, both white, who are a MTF who then said fuck the gender game, lets all be outlaws, and one FTM who identifies as a masculinized female. I’m actually feeling a little limited in accurate representation because of Racism, Classism and Sexism. The only thing going for me at the moment in the intersections of my topic, is sexuality. My sexuality allows me access to other individuals who play with gender in much the same way I do. Or allows me access to persons who are willing to think about gender.

On the topic of gender, there’s another point I want to tease out of my writing: most Transgendered individuals must pass for survival. What is passing? Passing is where a transgendered person, through hormone therapy, clothing, action, voice, gesture, characteristics(some or all of these) must emulate the sex the transgendered person desires to be. This offers a complication in individual expression and stress on the transgendered person when passing is not accomplished or is not accomplished easily. FTM’s have an easier time of passing then MTF. Also, when a transgendered person is mistaken for the sex they do not want to be, it can be very traumatic, or insulting to their self esteem. It’s dangerous to fuck around with gender, or to even buy desired clothing with this extra societal expectation hanging over their heads.

How do these systems of power impact or pertain to my topic?
Nationalism: When I think about nationalism, the stereotypes jumping forward in my brain are the ultra patriotic, conservative republicans who carry guns and hunt homosexuals. A demonized view of the conservative left related to religion and patriotism.
The second one, womyn in the military, often more masculinized, stereotyped as lesbians, yet fighting to stay in their military positions. (I don’t understand why they would want to, but I respect the decision)
Then the third one is the feminist. The individuals, male, female and neither, who are fighting on picket lines, working with organizations for rights and standing up for being an American against the war, and pro-humanity. These people get a lot of flack in the mainstreamed media, being represented as more than civil disobedients, as terrorists and threats to the American way of living. Mostly, they’re threats to capitalism and labeling people as profit instead of actually looking at the human cost to do things.

Sexism comes into play immediately for the women and men who step outside of gender norms, in educational opportunities, in a career searchs, in walking through a public space or using a public bathroom not labeled UNISEX.

Classism enters the scene when an individual chooses, or happens to exist outside of gender, or is considered gender deviant(for my paper this is defined as not fitting into societal specific gender roles), as their job opportunities and social opportunities drop lower then their parents status, even if their parents already existed at poverty level.