Category Archives: Representation
Reads of the Week: Salaries and White Fragility
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“There’s no such thing as pure feeling. You have a feeling because you’ve filtered the experience through a particular lens. The feeling is the outcome. It probably feels natural, but of course it’s shaped by what you believe.” – Sam Adler-Bell, AlterNet
- “By sharing that basic data, we empower everyone. And yet when I look deep into my heart and ask why I haven’t yet just typed my current salary here I must admit that it’s because the powers of taboo are strong in me, too. I think back to that man in my old job; I think of my current colleagues. One tweet could change the way we all feel about each other. And that’s what’s so terrifying about it.” – Emily Dreyfuss, Wired
Reads of the Week: Shonda Rhimes, LGBT Women & ‘Glee’ Women
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
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Photo: @shondarhimes
“I am making TV look like the world looks. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people equal WAY more than 50% of the population. Which means it ain’t out of the ordinary. I am making the world of television look NORMAL. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe. And your tribe can be any kind of person, anyone you identify with, anyone who feels like you, who feels like home, who feels like truth. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe, see your people, someone like you out there, existing. So that you know on your darkest day that when you run (metaphorically or physically RUN), there is somewhere, someone, to run TO. Your tribe is waiting for you. You are not alone. The goal is that everyone should get to turn on the TV and see someone who looks like them and loves like them. And just as important, everyone should turn on the TV and see someone who doesn’t look like them and love like them. Because, perhaps then, they will learn from them.” – Shonda Rhimes, “You Are Not Alone.”
- “We know — intuitively, from stories, from our own lives — that queer women face unique and devastating economic challenges and are at higher risk for poverty than even straight women and LGBT men. Now, we have clear, comprehensive data that solidifies the seriousness of the problem and provides a new resource for battling it.” – “New Report Finally Gives Crucial Numbers on Economic Disparities Hurting LGBT Women”
- “Glee, another show that started out focusing on a female character whose career dreams kept her going, is now one of the most anti-female shows airing. The show consistently belittles the role of women, using them as little more than emotional leaning posts for their boyfriends, boyfriends who are always heroic and decent. When Finn outed Santana it was treated as a good thing, Finn helping her come to terms with her sexuality by serenading her with a cover of Girls Just Want to Have Fun. After all, lesbianism is just girls having fun, right? Weeks later when Dave Karofsky suffers similarly by being outed it is shown through an emotionally overwrought montage and makes way for a story about teen suicide.” – “Where Have All the Good Women Gone?”
Reads of the Week: Call outs, Kids, Corinthian, Police
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing.” – A Note on Call-Out Culture
- “The casual dismissal of something you know to be absolutely true about yourself is infuriating at best, and dehumanizing at worst. Let us also acknowledge not only the vast amount of sexism contained within these ideas, but also the cissexism embedded in them as well. Not all women can have children, and not all people who can have children are women. Gender stereotypes like these end up being all the more harmful because they refuse to operate outside of a binary that winds up being exclusionary to the many folks who don’t neatly fit into it.” – Jessica Burnell, I Don’t Want Children–Ever
- “If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a trillion dollars, you own the bank. Together, we own the bank.” – Corinthian 15, on Student Loans
- “Since 1935, nearly every so-called race riot in the United States—and there have been more than 100—has been sparked by a police incident, Muhammad says. This can be an act of brutality, or a senseless killing. But the underlying causes run much deeper. Police, because they interact in black communities every day, are often seen as the face of larger systems of inequality in the justice system, employment, education and housing.” – Yes, Black America Fears the Police. Here’s Why.
Reads of the Week: Bi-Invisibility
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“In usual form, nearly all the responses, from the media and public alike, ignore the possibility that anyone could be bisexual (or queer). And nearly all the responses attempt to either confidently or subtly assert an identity upon an actress who has never provided any public defining label about her sexuality.” – Raechel Tiffe, “Buzz About Kristen Stewart’s Sexuality Tells Us a Lot About Society’s Discomfort with Bisexuality”
Reads of the Week: Billings, Trauma, Gender and Straightsplaining
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“We have got to realize that we are all students of the human experience. And if we do not start learning from each other and really listening and receiving the gift from the person across from us, we are lost.” –Alexndra Billings, Jezebel
- “The paradox of the current system is that the reliability of the victim is crucial to the prosecution of a crime that features unreliability as an almost guaranteed byproduct. This point seems lost on many of the people currently swept up in a reactionary obsession with the account of one alleged survivor.” – ThinkProgress, “I Was Sexually Assaulted as a Child. Here’s Why I Didn’t Remember for Years”
- “Gender is not sex, and sex is not gender, although explanations of both will vary. And gender identity is not gender expression, although they might play into each other. And a sandwich is not a wrap, although you can convert it into one.” – Autostraddle, “Rebel Girls: Waiter, There’s Some Theory in My Gender”
- “If you want to know about gay people—their lives, their desires, their ideas, their cultures—listen to gay people. If you want to know about straight people, listen to straight people talking about gay people.” – Gawker, “A Fieldguide to Straightsplaining”
The Trouble with ‘Glee’
I was frantically running around my bedroom, angling my computer just right to capture the action on the TV screen and making sure my computer wouldn’t go to sleep in the middle of recording. (This is what I call poor woman’s DVR.) I chewed all my fingernails off with anxiety before I even left the house in fear my sad attempt at recording a live television show wouldn’t capture what I needed it to. I barely made it out the door on time. What was wrong with me?
On that night, Glee was airing its season three Valentine’s Day episode. At the time, I was still trying to convince myself I wanted to be a professional saxophone player (along with denying other parts of my identity). So, I was out the door to rehearse a big saxophone solo I was performing with a local orchestra. Unfortunately, the rehearsal time was scheduled so that I might miss all or part of the Valentine’s Day episode of Glee. Sure, I could watch it later, but there was no way that was going to cut it. Not at all. Rumor had it, and oh, I don’t know, maybe twenty episodes overdue, that a beautiful moment like this was happening:
Glee characters, Brittany (on the left) and Santana, Glee’s resident lesbian (on the right)
TEDxTeen – Tavi Gevinson: Still Figuring it Out
Found this TEDx video about female characters, female representation, feminism and what that means for teenage girls. Pretty cool little video.
