I hate having to organize with my shitty ex

Sometimes, you feel that you are part of a team, and that you don't have to run around and shoulder all the responsibility, and that feels really great. Sometimes, you are reminded that some people will probably never change, and you will probably never be able to trust them even with little things, yet you are supposed to trust them with really big things. And that feels really shitty. Sometimes, your ex boyfriend who bailed on you when you were being threatened with rape and torture, and then just stood by while your friend fucked your rapist (and gloating about it too!), who went on very date-like things where you cooked for him and did couple-y things but was not dating you because he didn't want to date anyone (but was quite alright with dating someone else who is a lot of things you aren't while lying), will offer&promise to do something really small, but won't do it. And that feels like your efforts, emotional labor, and solidarity are not with 15 seconds. Fuck communists who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

I wanna grow this!

Moss Growing Guides

for those interested in growing mosses here are some good resources

How to Grow Moss - explains the 2 main types of moss and how to grow them.

Moss Growers Handbook.pdf - a really good resource and guide for growing British bryophytes. 

One for the road~~

The mixture hits you hard Don’t get that sinking feeling, don’t fall apart Some out of tune guitar Soundtrack to disaster

Arctic Monkeys - One for the Road  

ballpoint drawing

Overshare

Hey tumblr, I am trying out something I haven't really done before and I figured that... Some of y'all may be experiencing similar feels. I think this has to do with my PTSD. Sometimes it helps to feel you ain't alone. Also i feel v like i cant trust my judgment... Anywho, survivor solidarity combined with extravert needing time away from direct interactions means I will share my feels with you... I hope that you're doing good today! To be really honest, I'm not. I'm having a really hard time dealing with anxiety and my depression is back in full force. Having the weird brain that I do, and trying to deal with some of my issues, is leaving me feeling unmotivated, de-energized, and constantly feeling like poop. Some of the things that help me deal with all that fun stuff are: - knowing that other folks know (so I feel less like I'm disappointing everyone and being really flaky and being shit company), hence this perhaps unexpected message. - having folks check-in (I feel like my bleakness is contagious and I feel less inclined and able to reach out but I'm still too much of an extravert to be able to handle less social time) - watching nerdy shit (so like if you wanna marathon nature docs or just help me get my paws on some v witty and somewhat cynical shows/films, please don't hesitate) - eating somewhat regularly (I have no appetite and feel hella nauseous but if I cook for folks, I'm more likely to eat.... So bro-food-dates are v welcome). - if you cancel or postpone plans, I am really not able to detach a feeling of being really awful from that happening... So like please maybe try to make it really clear that its not because you hate me (cause that is where my feelings go, no logic to it tbh). This isn't yo say don't do what you gotta do, just know that I physically can't make myself not interpret this particular thing in this particular way. Please don't take this message as me putting a lot if pressure/relying in you to see me through these times; I'm just trying a different approach to weathering this shit storm and it involves letting people know what's going on and how I can be supported. Beaucoup d'amour 💖

Sometimes I'm cute

Camille Chew aka lordofmasks on Tumblr

Art prints on Etsy

I feel the antagonisms of capitalism so much more acutely today :(

All my face piercings are lined up!

Back to my roots...

DarkMatter – a queer South Asian artist and activist collaboration — spent the majority of Summer 2013 in Palestine (both the West Bank and ’48). We were hosted by alQaws, a queer Palestinian organization that focuses on cultural and social change around gender and sexuality in the context of the Palestinian liberation struggle. With alQaws, we conducted writing/performance workshops around gender, sexuality, and imperialism, and performed in various cities across West Bank and 48.

The original intention of our trip was to advance broader conversations around the ways in which Western queer solidarity work in Palestine is dominated by white queer bodies and ideologies. We were both concerned by how many queer people of color we organized with in the United States did not have access to an analysis of Palestine, let alone transnational imperialism/colonialism. We trace this to a carefully curated strategy to de-radicalize racial justice in this country by curtailing it as a domestic issue. Thus the racial distribution of solidarity activists is not innocuous but results from the dynamics of white supremacy and imperialism in the state, NGOs, and media

In this first thought piece we want to unpack how white supremacy has influenced solidarity work around Palestine and how that negatively impacts movements for Palestinian liberation. We use white supremacy to signify a form of privilege built from legacies of colonialism, enslavement, genocide, and other acts of terrorism and oppression committed by people with access to whiteness against other peoples. White supremacy includes psychic, cultural, economic, and social supremacy.

We trace the domination of Western queer solidarity work with Palestine by white people to four major roots in the material and social realities of White supremacy:

As a result of (settler-) colonialism and systems of enslavement, white people dominate most material resources and institutions in the West. They frequently have the most access to capital, time, and networks to participate in solidarity work abroad.

White bodies are generally less scrutinized by states, police, and settlers (including Zionist settlers).  They are more easily able to pass through airports and other borders and to be visible without fear of racialized state violence.

The impulse of white people to ‘help’ the foreign Other comes from a long legacy of a colonial mentality. The ‘white savior complex’ is prevalent throughout social sector work, especially global development and NPIC (non profit industrial complex) work.

White folks (and folks with access to various white privileges) frequently displace systems of oppression and power struggles to the non-West, ignoring the struggles—in which they are more materially complicit—in their domestic spaces. We believe North American queer solidarity work with Palestine, for example, is bankrupt without both an analysis of the histories of settler-colonialism and indigenous genocide in North America, and of criminalization and exploitation of black people and people of color through institutions like the prison.

Furthermore, the work that white queer bodies do (by their very presence) is reinforcing the notion that queerness most genuinely ‘belongs’ to Whiteness. This is in the political context of a gay and lesbian movement that increasingly serves the needs of elite white gay men in the West. Over the past decade we’ve also witnessed unprecedented support for a global LGBT rights movement. Several prominent Pride parades have made ‘WORLD PRIDE’ the theme of the week — discussing the rampant homophobia occurring across the world in Uganda, Iran, Vietnam, Russia, etc. The Obama Administration has allocated millions of dollars to the US State Department to fund emerging LGBT social movements abroad. Hilary Clinton declared to the United Nations that “Gay Rights are Human Rights.”

While such support might seem ‘progressive,’ with further scrutiny we realize that a global, homogenous, delocalized gay movement does not serve the needs of most sexual and gender minorities (who are not white, not financially privileged, etc). And actually, such a ‘global gay’ identity further distracts from Western imperialist and racist violence. We saw a connection here between the radical queer people of color activist movements we aligned ourselves with in ‘North America’ and queer Palestinian activism not in our shared oppression but rather our shared resistance to a white supremacist neocolonial agenda. Indeed, such a movement actually serves the interests of the colonizers: in Palestine Israeli settlers on Palestinian land and in North America white and brown settlers on Native American land.

Among Israel’s colonial strategies is ‘pinkwashing’, in which the state of Israel uses gay rights (everything from Prides to advertisements for asylum to gay tourism campaigns) as a distraction from its occupation. The result of the overrepresentation of whiteness in Palestine solidarity work has a few effects on the efficacy of anti-pinkwashing and queer solidarity work:

Pinkwashing is about defining a consolidated queer/gayness as a ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ artifact from the West in comparison to the backwards Rest. The overrepresentation of white US queers in anti-pinkwashing movements perpetuates this narrative.

The colonial impulse to ‘save’ queer Palestine is one that reinscribes the victim narratives about queer Palestinians that actually service pinkwashing.  Further, it makes pinkwashing appear as a single-issue device (that only oppresses queers), where in fact pinkwashing is a tactic of occupation that oppresses all Palestinians, of all genders and sexualities.

Anti-pinkwashing is not a ‘queer issue’; it is an issue of Palestinian liberation. We wanted to envision and practice a transnational queer solidarity that is not dominated by white people, is also not complicit in single-issue politics, and is self-reflexive about the racial and class violences that operate in solidarity activists’ domestic contexts (for us, the United States). The erasure of race and class violence and suppression of race and class warfare by gay rights is not an Israel-only phenomenon. Ultimately, though, the goal is to shift the focus away from white and Israeli settler queer bodies, even as ‘allies’, towards sexual and gender justice for all currently and formerly enslaved and colonized peoples.­

If I feel sad at least I can look poetic!

"I’m sick of how bisexuality is erased in LGBT spaces. I get really nervous before any LGBT event, especially Pride. I feel incredibly sad and hopeless when gay and lesbian people call me insulting names. If gay and lesbian people don’t understand me – Continue reading Prejudice at Pride at Empathize This

Truth

At times, the weight of the sadness can press down on you so heavily that your heart feels as though it is valiantly attempting to spill out of your ribcage. Time has taught me that one of the better ways of relieving some of that pent-up pressure is by letting some salty tears squeeze their way out of your eyes, thus reestablishing some inner balance. I have also noticed that if a pair of arms be wrapped around ones torso, the whole messy process is almost always accelerated; thus bringing relief from the affliction sooner. This leads me to hypothesize that perhaps this action of "hugging" would favor the condensation process of Heartache.