girl fight

Before I show you this video I want to tell you how graphic and violent it is. These women are pregnant, they are fighting each other, other people are watching, cheering them on even, and it's very disturbing. This video is going to make you angry, but it happened last week. It's a little long, so if you want, you can just skip to the fighting scenes. After watching it, we'll talk.

Ok, I know that was tragic. I've been pregnant before. I know how vulnerable and alone and big and sad being pregnant is. I know how angry people can make you get, and I will admit to having screamed at a girl at a party when I was 2 months pregnant with my son. I seriously could have went there with her, but my son's dad, picked me up and got me out of there. Not my finest hour.

We are women. We are not supposed to fight each other. Period. There are no exceptions to this rule. Nothing is worth fighting another girl over. At my internship, four girls "jumped" a fifth girl, at least 10 people watched, not doing anything, not calling anyone, not helping. The four girls were STAFF. Other people watching the fight were JUNIOR STAFF. Someone taped it. Our cameras caught it. They saw the knife, they saw who was fighting, and people were fired. This is a COMMUNITY CENTER. These staff work with children. It's sad. Maybe I have said too much already. I'll be quiet about my work now.

Things to Consider

1. A lot of men think girl-fighting is sexy. They get off on watching you fight other women. They want you to fight in jello, in pudding, in a kiddie pool full of noodles, on the street, in a bikini covered in oil. Don't do it.

2. A whole lot of girl fights are over words, or men. Men are not worth fighting over. They're just not. The thing about men is they LIE. There will be times when you didn't realize someone was married or had a girlfriend because he didn't tell you and his female partner, instead of getting mad at him, will come at you. This is stupid. Don't do it.

3. It's selfish to fight when you're pregnant. Your baby gets stressed out. It's still growing. It could get hurt, it could die. Don't do it.

4. If you do get in a fight or someone "jumps" you, most people won't help you. They will stand there and watch, they will go get some popcorn, they will pull out their camera phone, even if you are on the floor dying, nope, not gonna help you. Sometimes even the police.

5. And finally, it's a crime. You will just go to jail, where you will get in more fights. It's an ugly cycle.

We are women. Of course we make each other mad sometimes, we will disagree, we will have misunderstandings about men, we will not like the tone we take with each other sometimes, but we must never get violent with each other. We have the gift of communication. We should use it to our advantage. We don't have to love each other, but we must not kill each other either. I can't stress that enough. Please don't fight your sisters. And we are all sisters.

Women sometimes want to beat my ass, for a lot of different reasons and they make it extremely clear to me. It's scary. I walk around scared quite a bit actually. It's no way to live. Luckily I haven't been beat up yet, hopefully I never will. I hope you never get beat up either, and if you have, I'm sorry. I know it wasn't your fault. I hope someone helped you. I hope security guards didn't stand there and watch you get your ass beat doing nothing. I hope that feeling of total helplessness fades with time. I hope you don't live in fear of other women, like I do sometimes.

-lamesha

What I'm listening to- The Noisettes

It's been some time since my last entry (I started a new job plus summer classes, and both are kicking my ass), but I forgot to mention in it that we have a new writer here at Grrrl Perspective. Her name is LaMesha, and she is responsible for the last few fun and insightful posts we've had. I'm really excited to have her on board with us, and feel that she is going to (and already has) bring something new and fresh to the table with her witty and down-to-earth entries. You can find out more about LaMesha in our 'About Us' section here.

Anyways, I have this secret love for British garage-rock that my boyfriend always makes fun of me for. Therefor, I wish I started listening to the band The Noisettes sooner. I just recently found out about them and fell in love with their unique sound. They are an indie/garage-rock band from London comprised of singer and bassist Shingai Shoniwa, guitarist Dan Smith, and drummer Jamie Morrison. They have been around since 1996 and are pretty popular in the UK. 

Their frontwoman, Shingai, is amazing. Her voice is beyond captivating, and she brings some serious power and energy to the music that I can't even explain in words, you just have to listen to it/see it for yourself. Not to mention her stage presence is out of this world; basically, the chick fucking rocks! Even though The Noisettes are primarily an indie/garage-rock band, they experiment with a ton of different sounds in their albums; everything from punk, to swing, to soul, and much more. They are great musicians and definitely worth a listen.

"We've come to clean up the landscape and get rid of the male-dominated indie landfill" 

Their official website
Their myspace

5 feminist conversations i'm over

I have issues with "feminism" and somedays I am definitely 100% radical feminist and other days, I'm definitely over it. I did the women's studies degree, wrote the papers, marched at "take back the night," had the midwife when I was pregnant, etc etc etc. But now here I am writing for a feminist blog about feminist issues. I know right? What the hell am I doing? The few blogs that I've done so far have been "lamesha light," my attempt at making a good impression and not pissing off a whole bunch of people I don't even know. I don't want to insult you by writing about shit you already do and know about (washable pads, consent, etc) which I think is a little overdone. So today, for the first time, I'm going to attempt to go hardcore and write about the stupid shit I see and hear in my "feminist life" that piss me the fuck off. Hopefully you won't be offended, but if you are, I don't care. LOL

1. Chris Brown hating. We know he beat Rihanna's ass. How many years ago was that? He's done everything he has to do legal wise, and is trying to go back to work. Are we just supposed to hate him the rest of his life for something he did as a teenager? How long are we supposed to watch him squirm? He's 21, so what 60 more years? Have you ever got in a fight with someone? I know assault isn't right and hitting women is a sin but let's not forget Snoop's murder trial, R Kelly peeing on some little girl and videotaping it, Michael Jackson and those little boys, Woody Allen marrying his own daughter, John Mayer's racist dick in Playboy and overtime, those men have still prospered and everyone loves them. We don't even talk about this anymore, but Chris Brown you think should rot in hell? Let that shit go. That nigga is sorry. It's not good to spend so much time worrying about celebrities anyway.

2. "How can we get more women of color to come to our white girl feminist functions? They must not care about these issues..." and "Why aren't more women of color breastfeeding or marching or making zines?" I could go at the this one several different ways. First I am not a woman of color. I'm black. African American. Voodoo priestess. Shawty. But I refuse to be lumped in a non-white category with every other non-white woman on Earth. We aren't the minority and we are all very different; making us one category robs us of our culture. And then asking us why we don't come to your white girl feminist parties and speakers? Are you serious? Maybe we need a break from you. There's a million reasons why black and brown people don't embrace "feminism" the way white girls want us to, and I'm not going to list them all here. Just stop asking me about it. I'm not your gateway into black womanhood.

3. "porn oppresses women. prostitution is a crime. both are violence against women". ummm no.

4. We're not "women," we're "womyn/wimmin" (or some other spelling that drives my spellcheck crazy). This is stupid. We all know what you are. You aren't really causing a paradigm shift by spelling your gender differently. You're mostly just being annoying.

5. "Courtney Love. Assuming black and brown women don't like to rock out". Last week Courtney Love made an ass of herself (not the first time) in DC by pulling a black girl on stage and asking, "Do you really like rock music? Because you're African American. That would be like me being into Lil Wayne". Look that shit up. It seriously happened. Then I started thinking about all the girl bands I listen to and yeah most of them are white. I don't hate them, I actually think they're quite good, but yeah they are all white, which doesn't really mean anything, it's just interesting to think about, for a lot of reasons. Black girls rock out hardcore. Can you name 5 black rocker girls? I can't, but there are hundreds of them. I think. When you see us, don't point and stare and pull us on stage. That's seriously fucked up.

6. "Fuck these patriarchal beauty standards". I hear you loud and clear, but women wearing pink and glitter and heels are not the enemy. And believe it or not, a whole bunch of women LIKE wearing that shit. We are not dumb, less feminist or watered down because of it. A long time ago when I was in undergrad I walked up to my feminist friends sitting in the grass and they started talking about my pink backless shirt and how their own clothes weren't so "cutesy," then it got awkward so I left and one of them said "see you later Blossom". Do you remember that show? I loved it. But that's not the point. The point is that my "friend" snuck a little snide comment in front of our all of our other friends simply because I like dressing up. And that was at least 8 years ago and I still remember everything about that day. Feminism is not about laughing at other girls and making them feel insecure. Especially over something as trivial as clothes. Remember you are pro-choice. Respect my choice to wear booty shorts.

And that's it. For now...

go shawty, it's your birthday...

My birthday's on Tuesday. I'll be 28. I don't really feel old and have had a lot of fucked up birthdays so I plan to lay low and just go to work and chill. While I don't really NEED anything it's fun to think about what I would want if given the choice and the opportunity. The thing about getting older and accomplishing shit and making my own money is that damn near everything I'm about to list I am capable of getting myself. That's probably the best gift of all, the gift of self-empowerment.

1. Vegan Vulva Lip Balm, (getting it) http://vulvalovelovely.com/

2. Lady Gaga tickets (too expensive, but not really)

3. Stripper Pole (just ordered from my pole dancing teacher), http://www.xpoleus.com/

4. Kid Cudi (unattainable, but he hasn't met me yet...)

fine. as. hell.

5. pierced nipples, (got them on june 11th). pierced anything else? we'll see

for the record, this is not my nipple.

6. healthy kidneys. i have focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. i'm in remission. that's all i'm gonna say.

7. ntozake shange books (read them, but don't own any).

8. beef ribs. pork ribs. any kind of ribs. there's nothing sexier than a chick knawing on a bone, plus they are fucking delicious. dry rub, saucy, barbecued, smoked, baked in the oven, simmered in the crock pot. i could eat ribs every day.

9. subscription to $pread magazine, (http://www.spreadmagazine.org/)

10. kanye west's self esteem. "In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?"-Kanye

and that's it. i'm chillin. happy birthday to me.

on being a natural

I had a little garden plot. I bought organic seeds and little tools and set out to teach my son, who would rather be watching tv and eating noodles, about nature. Deep down I probably thought this would be a good opportunity to prove my worth as a mother. I do not knit, I do not sew, I don’t cook dinner every night, I don’t do any of those things that my other mama friends do. I feel like I don’t measure up, and we all know motherhood can be quite the competition. I just wanted to be good at growing something, because I don’t think I am. I didn’t even grow my own child properly, he was early, a tiny little undercooked baby boy, literally cut out of me, because my body couldn’t handle being pregnant anymore. Surely, I could handle a garden.

The thing about having your own child is that they are often very similar to you, whether you like it or not. My son liked going to the store to buy the seeds because like me, he loves shopping. But the dirt digging, the bugs, the worms, the hot sun beating down on his little body? Not so much. I too must admit that I hated it. Not fun, my friends, not fun at all. I told myself that all over the world women work the land, growing crops for their families, tending the Earth, with their kids in tow. I could do this. My son would love it. I would finally have something to talk about in mommy group (I usually just sit around reading Cosmo), while the women knit, nurse babies and talking about their peaceful home births.

I am not one of those mothers. But I want to be. Sometimes. But I want to have better clothes. And shoes.

This morning, I went to my garden. It’s been raining, a tornado or two has passed through my state, my son is on vacation, I have two jobs and two summer school classes and an active social life; all reasons I use for not going to my garden regularly, and it shows. My little seeds have grown, but so has the grass and it’s hard to tell which parts are weeds and which is the plants. So I just left it, all of it, and went back home. All the other gardens are beautiful, the corn stalks are growing, little flowers are blooming, white picket fences are up, and there are no weeds. Someone threw a plastic soda bottle in my garden and I didn’t even pick it up. I just don’t see the point anymore.

And then I realized this: I am not a gardener. I am not like the other mothers. And I have a debit card. I can buy whatever the fuck I want, when I want, and I can keep my toes clean and my kid entertained in the grocery store. I do not knit, I take my buttons to the cleaners to get mended, and I hate digging in the dirt. I’d rather take my kid to shows, the mall, and on airplanes. He prefers to sit around reading magazines and eating cookies and noodles for dinner too. We can play video games for hours, in the house, where there’s a fan, and cold soda to drink. We are city people. Our carrots come in a bag with a twisty tie on them.

I’m a quitter. If things are not going the way I want them to, I am not going to use up all my energy and time trying to make it fit with my life when it simply won’t. That’s not the way my brain operates. Life is too short to be unhappy in situations that you can change. And so as soon as I am done with this blog, I am turning in my tools and letting my apartment managers know that I am done gardening and am going to pay the fine for not weeding my garden at the end of the season. I have two jobs; I can afford the fine. I refuse to be miserable doing something that I hate just to prove a point, to myself, and to my son, who is four states away. He just got a Nintendo DS and honestly doesn’t give a shit about vegetables; he doesn’t even eat them anyway. And I am going to be happy all day, working, climbing the corporate ladder in baby blue high heels and a city-girl skirt, eating perfectly cut baby carrots out of a Ziploc bag in my cubicle, with the AC on. Point proven. Nails clean. Guilt gone. And while I am not going to win any awards for being Minnesota's most natural mother, I am doing what feels natural to me--not gardening.

What is going on at Cornell University?

I apologize in advance if my writing and language in this post is all over the place, you'll have to excuse me because I don't think I've ever found out about something that has disgusted and pissed me off as much as this story has. I'm so mad, I sort of feel like I need to vomit. (*Trigger warning for child sexual abuse survivors*) 

"A pediatric urologist at Cornell University-Dix Poppas-has been operating on little girls with what he judges to be oversized clitorises, cutting away important clitoral tissues, and then stitching the glans to what remains of the shaft. 

There's lots to be outraged about here: there's nothing wrong with these girls and their healthy, functional-if-larger-than-average clitorises; there's no need to operate on these girls; and surgically altering a girl's clitoris because it's "too big" has been found to do lasting physical and psychological harm. But what's most outrageous is how Poppas performs his follow-up examinations, which involve Poppas stimulating the girls’ clitorises with vibrators while the girls, aged six and older, are conscious.

At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, Poppas touches the daughter’s surgically shortened clitoris with a cotton-tip applicator and/or with a “vibratory device,” and the girl is asked to report to Poppas how strongly she feels him touching her clitoris. Using the vibrator, he also touches her on her inner thigh, her labia minora, and the introitus of her vagina, asking her to report, on a scale of 0 (no sensation) to 5 (maximum), how strongly she feels the touch. Poppas has indicated that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls. "

What the actual fuck!? I just can not fathom how this is even going on. How was this passed by Cornell's medical board? I don't even know where to start. First off, who the hell are Poppas and his team of (all male, might I add) surgeons to decide what a "normal" looking clitoris is? News flash: there is no such thing as a "normal" looking clitoris. They come in all different shapes and sizes, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Women are already insanely critical of their bodies and are always struggling to meet society's made-up female beauty standards (as LaMesha touched on in her post below), and by stating that there is one certain way that a clitoris should look they are just perpetuating this obsession with perfection, making women believe that everything about them needs to be perfect- even their vagina's. But these are just children we are talking about here, infants even. If when they are older and can make their own decisions they decide that they want to go through with a procedure like this to shorten their clitorises then fine. But nobody should be making that decision for them when they are too young to understand or consent to it themselves. The fact that these girls are being seen as sex objects from the moment they get out of the womb is disgusting. Nobody should be looking at and judging their genitals in this way. 

And then there are his "follow-up examinations", are you kidding me!? A grown man routinely touching a girl as young as six's (or in some cases even younger) clitoris with a vibrator and asking her when she feels something...hello Cornell University, that is child sexual abuse and molestation. Poppas (I refuse to put a Dr. before his name) is a pedophile and a monster, who was somehow allowed permission to live this fucked up dream of his. I can't understand how the parents are just agreeing to this and even sitting back and watching as this sick man performs these disturbing "examinations" on their daughters. If I ever had a daughter and some doctor even proposed the idea of doing this to her, I think I would soon be in jail for assault. But the sad thing is that most parents don't act that way, when it comes to their children, it seems like parents are so afraid of something going wrong with them that they will just automatically believe and go along with whatever the doctor says to do...because, well, he's the doctor. Which I guess is a sad thing, but I still don't get how a parent could watch as those "follow-up examinations" occurred, I think anybody with a brain and a moral conscious would know that those procedures are beyond wrong. But I guess not...?

There's another disturbing reason this surgery is being performed: people seem to believe that girls with large clitorises are more likely to identify as lesbians when they grow up. Which is quite obviously a completely ridiculous statement. Carving up a girls clitoris does nothing to change her sexual orientation, and besides, what is so damn wrong with being a lesbian anyway? Why are parents and doctors and so on so afraid of giving birth to a gay child that they would instead put them through all of this physical and psychological harm?

Last thing, why has this not been in the news? Why does nobody even know that this grotesque act is being performed right here in New York? The news channels haven't even covered this story once yet, even with numerous people sending it in to them. I wouldn't be surprised if that was because Cornell University payed news channels a big chunk of money to keep this swept under the carpets so that their school doesn't get a bad reputation. But fuck that, it's bullshit that everybody knew when Michael Jackson died, and news channels talked about it for days on end, but nobody knows about Cornell University legally performing female genital mutilation and child molestation. America, your standards are all fucked up. And I am just so extremely sad for the innocent young girls who had to go through these traumatic events, and I just hope that they can still live normal lives even after remembering the cruel things that happened to them as infants and young children.

Source: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4730&blogid=140

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=136407289706975&v=wall

Do something, Call Dr. Poppas at (212) 746-5337

Tell him EXACTLY what you think of his "research". 

Email or call Cornell University's research provost and tell him to end the practicing of female genital mutilation and child molestation at his school.

Kent Fuchs

provost@cornell.edu

(607) 255-2364 

Perfection

I want to be the perfect woman. I majored in woman’s studies in undergrad so I know that all the silly mainstream magazines I read are full of airbrushed models and that if I lost the 35 pounds I want to lose I’d probably stop having periods and that every person on Earth has pores and that I will never have naturally flippy hair and long curly eyelashes. But every day I kill myself a little bit striving for a perfection that doesn’t exist. Every calorie is guilt, I have a $200 face scrubber, about 10 exercises videos I don’t watch, an appointment next week to get a head full of weave, a bathroom full of make up, a closet full of clothes, shoes, accessories. I consider myself “low maintenance,” and I really feel like I am. It’s sick, but I feel normal. In the grand scheme of perfection questing, I am small scale. I know it’s not real. I can leave the house without being “done up” but only sometimes.

At any one point in time I am doing at least three full time jobs. I have a kid. I am a full time grad student. I work. I get perfect grades. I have a successful zine. I refuse to be half assed. My son wore cloth diapers and then organic recyclable diapers. I cried when I couldn’t afford them anymore and had to buy generics. He was breastfed for over 3 years, I made his baby food, I stayed home with him for 6 months, carrying him in the baby sling, totally losing myself in this unrealistic idea of perfect motherhood. Grad school requires a “B” or better in everything or you essentially fail. A “B” is still good, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just not a perfect “A” and when I got one I bawled to my therapist, “that stupid bitch gave me a B”. I was devastated. Once I finish writing my zine I sit with it, afraid to put it out, for at least a month. I have to make it perfect. I disappoint myself all the time. It’s not perfect. I want to quit making it.

A lot of women have this crazy fucked up idea in their head that life is a competition and whoever is the prettiest, skinniest, best cook, best dressed, best writer, best mother, best dick sucker, whatever, wins. And winning is so much better than losing, right? And we are smart, we know all of this is fucked up and a total waste of time, but we will sit there getting our pubes waxed into the shape of a heart or only eat carrots for a week or spend five hours in a beauty salon getting someone else’s hair braided into our own anyway. I have a good body, nice boobs, cute butt, pretty round face, happy eyes, and this guy called me “thick” and I wanted to kill him. I went hysterical. Try giving a girl a compliment, she’ll think you’re a spy or totally downplay herself. I hardly ever hear “thanks”. I am learning how to say it, realizing that yes, what this person is saying is in fact true. I am good at my job. Thank you.

The thing about perfection is that it still matters to women. Men can be fat and balding and old and they are still rewarded with money, raises, younger women, respect. If a woman has one wrinkle, gets pregnant, gains 10lbs, has a flat chest, nappy hair, people notice. Everything is at stake; her career, her sanity, her marriage, her finances, her opportunity for advancement, etc. They circle actresses fat legs in magazines, it's on the news; I am not even kidding. So yeah, striving for perfection is not all that unreasonable. Our livelihoods depend on it sometimes. We need the money, we still don't make as much as men.

People have made billions of dollars convincing women that they are not enough. If we knew the truth, that we are beautiful, that our bodies and our faces and our bellies are enough, that we are smart, that we are good drivers, that we are good mothers, that our nappy hair is lovely, that our pubes can grow out, that we are good at math, that we can direct movies, that we can lead companies, that our too big or too small or too saggy tits were actually “just right”, what would happen? How much money would we save? How many more friends would we have? How much happier would we be? I can’t even imagine such perfection…