I read lots of advice columns, since I have a secret identity as an infrequent advice columnist myself, online.

Miss Manners has been one of my staples for quite a while. Generally she is amusing and the questions are vetted and non-offensive. I enjoy reading about how the “other 3/4s” live, only because I never have to worry about wording on wedding invitations, chipped china saucers, and neighbours’ dogs pooping on my lawn. But one question this week, and her response, have got me thinking, and marvelling at the fact that she might have gotten (most of) it right.

A disclaimer: the “where are you from?” analysis has been done to death, by bloggers and writers better than I. The “is it offensive to ask?” [YES] and “does it depend on who asks?” [also YES] debate make me tired and makes my head hurt. Mostly because the REAL question is “I want to keep asking that question of any POC I see. Is that okay?”

Um, NO! 

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a very silly blog entry and has nothing to do with anti-racism or anti-oppression. I’m just saying. No irate emails please! 

They say the first step in dealing with a problem is facing it and naming it.

And to be clear, I’m at best a low-femme, maybe a medium femme on a “fancy lady” day, even though I ain’t no fancy lady.

The issue: I’ve been looking for a courier style bag that will hold my cute purple laptop and the numerous personal crap that I need to drag around with me in the city, and when I travel around the province in May and June.

The problem: Here is a list of my current bags (in order of size), none of which meet my specifications. They do, however, meet other specifications. That’s part of the problem.

Small 

1. Tiny black leather bag for when I go out dancing. It can hold some cash and my keys. My wallet is too big to fit in it, which I knew when I bought it. Please note the last time I went out dancing, that is, hanging out at home until 11 and then going out, was around the year 2000. This bag is in the “go” pile.
2. Small black leather bag that can hold my wallet and not much else. It’s also for “going out” or “dancing”. Stop laughing. It’s staying.
3. The largest of the small bags is a black MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) Sundog bag, big enough for my wallet and daybook (barely). It’s not pretty, it’s functional. It’s going.

 Medium

 4. In the medium-size range we have my fake leather bag (black) with a purple flower on it. The bag is made by a local designer and is made out of old tires. For a while it was the coolest thing I owned. It’s nice, it passes the “medium fancy femme” test. It’s staying.

 5. Beautiful leather knapsack that my sister gave me (medium femme. Me, not my sister. My sister is a high femme), bought in Colombia. I haven’t used it in a number of years because it’s not big enough for files and it’s a bit awkward to wear. It’s going. 

 6. Lightweight black fabric bag that say F*ck F*ck F*ck on it, plus an “angry little girl” image. It’s a bit immature for me, given that I’m 42 and all, but I love it and I just got it as a gift from my sister. It has two cool little outside pockets, one for cel phone and one for ipod. It can’t be brought to any professional function. Staying!

 7. My current Crumpler courier bag that is black/grey on the outside and bright orange on the inside that I bought to carry my laptop only to find that my laptop won’t fit in it. Damn. I’ve never liked the bright orange interior, it’s so not professional. It’s going.

 8. Red cloth bag that I bought to carry my laptop and other things while travelling. It was cheap and it has no padded protection for the laptop. It’s going.

 9. My decades-old hardly-used black leather briefcase. I’ve used it recently because my laptop and files do fit in it, but R has forbidden me from using it as it’s ugly (I don’t disagree, I just don’t care). It’s going.

Large

10. My sturdy blue MEC knapsack. It fits my laptop, my waterbottle, and all my regular day- to-day crap. It’s not professional, but it suits my needs for non-professional moments, which is most of the time. Staying.

Ten bags is a lot for one person, and this isn’t including the two pieces of luggage I own, one black satchel kinda bag (small) and one red suitcase (medium). I’m a light packer, and I hardly ever travel. They’re both staying. They’re also tucked away in my closet and don’t bug me by falling out of the coat closet and all over everything like my other bags.

So, I have a problem, and I realize that I’m also always drawn to bags, always looking for that perfect size, colour (hard to believe since most of my bags are black) and how it looks on me. This needs to stop. 

Here’s a picture of my Pile of Bags of Shame.

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r137/maysiewaysie/photo.jpg

I co-facilitated a session this past weekend with a group of women who are staff and board members of a women’s shelter. During one of the large group discussions, there was talk of a recent comment regarding serving diverse groups of women, and a need for improvement in this area.

“We’re all women. I don’t understand why we need to do anything different with diverse groups of women. We’re all women.”

I was in the hot seat. I needed to respond.

Although yes, we are all women, different women have different needs, and in order to meet those needs we/you have to be aware of what those needs and realities are. For example if a woman is an immigrant and is sponsored by her husband (who is her abuser), also an immigrant, she may fear that her immigration status in Canada will be affected if she calls the police or seeks any help or support. There may be language issues and barriers. My colleague pointed out the needs of lesbians in abusive relationships, issues of trans-inclusion that many shelters and women’s service organizations are going through right now, as well as women who are racialized, impacted by poverty and other differences that face issues and realities that white middle class able bodied heterosexual woman do not.

There was a faint nod, but the speaker still indicated she didn’t understand anything outside of her narrow reality. Since this reality is what’s in the mainstream culture, I can actually understand that she has nowhere obvious to go to to inform herself, and it reminded me of the “security blanket” that privilege is.

Being all women means erasing all differences between women. My feminism doesn’t erase differences.

A friend of mine, Alex Flores, is an incredible artist. She does visual art, as well as filmmaking and documentaries. She asked me to participate in an interview about feminism and I promised her I’d link it to my blog, so here it is.

I need to share that I have a lot of difficulty watching myself on any recorded medium, and haven’t yet watched it all the way through.

Please send any comments to Alex’s site and to maysie(at)rogers(dot)com. 

Link to watch the video is here.

Amazon Fail  Amazon Fail  Amazon Fail  Amazon Fail  Amazon Fail  Amazon Fail  

This is all over Facebook, my favourite blogs, and sites with book lovers everywhere. Amazon, the USian online bookseller that has put many independent bookstores out of business has decided to mark books with positive queer content as “adult” and has therefore stripped such books of their “ranking” as well as their coming up on general searches. The following sites give more detail into what Amazon has been doing, since February apparently, but  it looks like a huge push was done this past long weekend while they thought nobody was looking.

Post at jezebel.com

The Angry Black Woman

Mark Probst

First they said it was a new policy to remove all books with “adult content” in this manner, meaning nudity and expressions of sexuality. But when “Heather Has Two Mommies” is placed on the list to have their ranking removed, and “A Parent’s Guide To Preventing Homosexuality” and “The Professional Bachelor Dating Guide: How To Exploit Her Inner Psycho” remain untouched, it’s fair to say that a homophobic agenda is going on.

Nudity of the homo kind is generally, but not exclusively, deleted. Nudity of the heterosexual kind mostly stays, but some is deleted. My theory is that staff were given a memo describing which books were “in” and which were “out”. But like all political agendas, had many holes in the logic and the applied theory. The word “homosexuality” is okay only if accompanied by “curing” or “fixing” or “OMG it’s a disaster!!!” Otherwise, chuck it. I’d also like to think that members of the secret group, the Homosexual Underground Liberation Front, many of whom are employed by such corporations, were in action during this work blitz this past weekend.

After being challenged on their first position, Amazon spokespeople now claim it was a glitch. See, now you’re just lying stupid. You should have stuck to your original retro-position, it might have gained you supporters in the homophobic community, a demographic you seem to be very much in favour of expanding.  

In the Jezebel article above, she notes that typing in “homosexuality” into the amazon search engine now reveals books such as “A Parent’s Guide To Preventing Homosexuality” and others which are on the topic of “curing” or “fixing” homosexuality, especially regarding your child if they’ve just come out to you.

Despicable.

[Edit. It seems that a search today, Mon April 13, reveals more queer-friendly books, if not slightly dull and academic. Maybe they're watching this unfold and paying attention. Nothing like the potential threat of an internet-wide boycott to get a corporation's attention. Money still is the bottom line. Can we please remember this?]

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I’m not and have never been a fan of amazon, Crapters/Indiblow or Bunns and Noodles (hey has anyone checked how Alison Bechdel’s books have fared?). Why? Because they are a corporate entity, that goes by the bottom line first (even in it’s first few years when it was hemorrhaging money). They have put hundreds, if not thousands of independent bookstores out of business across the US and Canada with their deep discounts, large square footage and McService. Even though that’s an old argument that many of you have heard me make many times over the years, it’s still true today. And it’s worse. Some were fooled by the Crapters/IndiBlow “sections” on queer theory and women’s studies. Really? A few shelves? Those books would not have come into existence, including the fringe publishers that were developed, were it not for independent and specialty bookstores. Never trust a corporation. Especially with books! For the love of cats, books FFS! Information! And books on coming out, books on “am I normal to feel this way?” typed in by some confused teen or child whose only access to this information is the internet??

So I won’t say “I told you so”.

But I will say: DON’T BUY BOOKS FROM ANY OF THOSE BASTARDS!!! EVER!!!

P.S. Just for fun I looked up the one book in which I have a chapter published. It’s been removed from the ranking system, but given the title it’s hardly a surprise.

With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn edited by Amber Dawn and Trish Kelly, published by fabulous Arsenal Pulp Press, based in Vancouver:  

http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=with+a+rough+tongue&x=0&y=0 

P.P.S. Books on my shelves, by rocking queer women I know, which have been removed:

Tamai Kobayashi: Quixotic Erotic, Exile and the Heart

 Alison Bechdel: Indelible Dykes to Watch Out For, all the smaller comic books from earlier years such as Carbon Based Dykes to Watch Out For, Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For

 ..interestingly, Bechdel’s new collection The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For still has a ranking. I wonder if books that are over 10,000 or some other arbitrary number, get to keep their ranking, since to some extent such books are making money. Others, well, they can fuck off can’t they? 

 ..and, just showing what goes on when an authors gets on the “homo” list, Bechdel’s grim biography Fun Home is off the ranking list.

..due to perhaps having small sales, being Canadian and having titles that don’t immediately indicate their queer content or the “bent” of the author, off the radar so far is: Elizabeth Ruth, Dionne Brand, Shyam Selvadurai, Wayson Choy.

 Support independent bookstores!! Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!! Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!  Support independent bookstores!!!!!!