Friday Linkaround

Jessica Yee is writing at Bitch about indigenous feminism, and compiled some amazing resources:

However I know that I’m speaking the language of the colonizer; English. So no matter what I say it’s not going to do my identity and my politics justice. I translate “feminism” to mean what my people have believed in since time immemorial – balance. So if it takes y’all a few extra words to give me my right to self-determination of what I want to be called – DEAL WITH IT.

J.K. Rowling writes about why programs supporting single mothers are important to her even now that she probably swims in a champagne pool in the evenings:

Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life. An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

Tami on places where “there are no black people“:

Saturday night, as my husband and I sped north on a highway in Central Indiana, I had a brainstorm: One day I’m going to write a book and I already know the title–There Are No Black People There: A History of African Americans in the Midwest. The book would tell the stories of black folks like me, who live in places they’re not “supposed to.”

C. L. Minou on sexual assault and transwomen:

For many trans women, any sex is potentially deadly. The two most publicized murders of trans women in recent years–Gwen Arujo and Angie Zapata–both involved women killed by consensual sexual partners who discovered (or at least claimed to have discovered, in Zapata’s case) their biological history. What’s depressing about public reaction to these cases isn’t the ordinary panoply of responses any woman’s assault summons up–the slut shaming of Gwen Arujo, the “she should have known better” tut-tutting of Angie Zapata–or even the usual dehumanization of the two women–the transphobe’s weapon of choice, using “it” as a pronoun for a person. No–it’s the most common and persistent accusation leveled against trans people of all stripes, the one that underlies both the bathroom libel and the exclusion from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival–the charge that trans people are committing deceit, and that we must advertise at all times, but most especially in sexual encounters, the intimate details of our past.

Anna at FWD on pseudonymity online:

Women like me – and so many other women and men with “hidden” disabilities, women and men who are trans*, people who are non-gender binary, who are bi or lesbian or gay, people who write about their struggles with racism or sexism or homophobia or bullying at work, people who are otherwise marginalized – risk losing their jobs, having their children taken away from them, risk being attacked in their homes or at work, having their children threatened, just for writing about their lives online.

Liss at Shakesville kicks Susannah Breslin’s ass:

I’m guessing that any one of the ladies at Feministing would have happily explained to you what a trigger warning actually is, since—shockingly!—it turns out that “Yahoo! Answers” isn’t always the best source on the internetz. But since you didn’t bother to ask them, or any of the other feminist/womanist writers in the blogosphere who use trigger warnings, let me offer my services, so that you might base your opinion of trigger warnings on Actual Facts.

Feel free to add links to your own blogs in the comments!