Last Friday night some friends and I went to check out Guerilla Queer Bar. In case you haven’t heard of it, this is a monthly occurrence here in Boston in which 1, 500 or so queers and allies are notified via an email list at the last minute which straight and misogynistic club we are going to show up at, with the hopes of overrunning the place.
This time, The Liquor Store was the target. I had never been there before, despite hearing that some Harvard events have taken place at this venue in the past. The place was in part chosen this time around because on the same night they were having a wet t shirt contest and a mechanical bull riding contest (I feel that the sarcastically toned feminist rampage i feel an urge to place here is unnecessary. I have faith, in you, reader. You get the picture. Or at least you see the picture right above.)
I went for several reasons. Firstly, as one of the event organizers is a friend of mine, I had heard that last month the bar of choice refused to let the queers and allies upstairs, and had only allowed them out of the building one at a time to smoke. It’s easy to forget that blatant homophobia exists completely unchecked and un-self aware when only frequenting queer friendly spaces, or at the least, surrounding myself with queer-friendly people to shield me from the structural homophobia in the institutions I choose to inhabit nonetheless. (This is a good place to insert a shout-out for two of my favorite QUEER and QUEER CELEBRATORY dance nights Boston: Gross Anatomy and The Neighborhood- which is happening this upcoming Saturday night.) And so, as hearing this enraged me, and I was filled with HOMO-militant desire to be a body in the loving struggle towards claiming woman hating and queer hating spaces as our own.
to imagine is to construct in one’s mind. there is always a kind of separation of the imaginer from the imagined, in the way that sometimes, when one is dreaming, the dreamer observes the dream.
absolute empathy/understanding can only take place in the space outside imagination, a space of pure feeling. that absolute empathy/understanding ceases to be empathy/understanding (which requires a subject and object) because it has become Enlightenment.
imagination, however, is the tool by which we move our pre/post-imagined understandings closer to that absolute.
language provides a good example. i am not fluent in french, yet i know some french words.
when i hear “avec” i know it means “with.”
when i hear “peut-être” i know it means “maybe.”
when i hear “je suis” i know it means “i am.”
but “with” is transparent to me, while “avec” is mediated, cloudy.
when i draw on the word “with,” i experience the word as though it does not symbolize the meaning of “with”…rather, the meaning and the word are one.
i understand “avec” by way of analogy, through its relationship to “with.” i say to myself “‘avec’ connects to the same meaning in the head of someone who speaks french that ‘with’ connects to in mine.” this is the significance of saying “‘avec’ means ‘with.’” if i were fluent in french i could still say, “‘avec’ means ‘with.’” but i could just as truthfully say “‘avec’ means ‘avec’.”
when i consider the president, or my mother, or the chinese, or the french, or billerica memorial high school students, or eddie izzard, or the protagonist in a movie i’m watching, or one of my friends (and i empathize with these people to widely varying degrees), i understand them as people through analogy, through their relationship to me. and conversely, i understand myself as a person through my relationship to them.
because he was a young black man walking out of a nightclub with his friends at 4 am. and for that reason, three police officers shot at him 50 times, widowing his fiancee (whom he was supposed to marry later that day) and leaving his two daughters without a father.
apparently the officers heard bell refer to his “gun.”
after they shot him 50 times, they found that he had no weapon.
but that doesn’t stop people like pmsanubis from leaving comments like this on the AOL story website:
Black representation at the low-scoring end of the IQ scale has strong implications for society. At least 25 percent of Blacks are below 75 in IQ, and an IQ in the 70-75 range is classified as “borderline retarded” by most psychologists. Practically no one in that IQ range will graduate from high school or even learn much of elementary school basics; none will qualify for the armed forces, and few will be able to find good employment.
They therefore take to violence or mobs to feel accepted.
I am of the opinion that these folks can be helped.
clearly, it was bell’s fault for being black and stupid…? i don’t quite understand the argument.
many others have dismissed the obvious racism that led to bell’s death because two of the other officers were not white…so how could it have been racism? (they claim).
well how ’bout this…read angela davis motherfuckers. better yet, open your eyes. black men fear black men. certainly racism (as it exists in the US) was developed by and for white people, but no one individual or singular group is the bearer of racism.
While I was glad to see another piece on criminal justice making the front page of the Times (lord knows the subject has been conspicuously absent from the presidential debates), the article weirdly omitted some key issues surrounding astronomical imprisonment levels in the U.S.
First, one of the reasons that our crazy conviction rates and harsher sentences matter, beyond interest in international comparisons, is that they correspond to massive disenfranchisement levels, another of our ignominious distinctions among Western countries.
Second, the piece discusses rates of imprisonment without questioning the value of prisons themselves — making no mention whatsoever of the nation’s prison abolition movement. I mean, I know it’s the New York Times, but still. Look at the other perspectives included:
“The simple truth is that imprisonment works,” wrote Kent Scheidegger and Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in The Stanford Law and Policy Review. “Locking up criminals for longer periods reduces the level of crime. The benefits of doing so far offset the costs.”
If you’re gonna quote some dude saying that prisons are a dandy solution to crime, then you could at least find someone who thinks that maybe prisons aren’t totally awesome. And who doesn’t view the whole world and its human populations in terms of a series of cost-benefit analyses.
Lefty political bloggers, as a species, have earned something of a reputation for being both confrontational and cowardly. There’s nothing inherently wrong with assertiveness, of course, or even outrage: see, for instance, the fabulous Angry Black Bitch. And, to a certain extent, discord (as opposed to, say, politeness) is healthy for democratic online communities. But although computer screens can embolden introverts and make for rousing debates, belligerence and impersonal exchanges in comment threads can leave even committed blogophiles feeling…disconnected.
We at Cambridge Common believe that online political dialogue can be especially edifying when rooted in offline community. CC has wonderful readers across the nation (and a few beyond), but ultimately, we are a place-based blog: Harvard is where we build. Online, we write, but we’re always looking to do more, to experiment and engage. So, in order to share wisdom with each other, and to give y’all a peek into our crazy heads, we now present our foray into video blogging (or “vlogging”): Common Conversations.
The premise is simple. Each week, a few Cambridge Commoners will get together, pick some subject that confuses, inspires, or enrages us, and talk about it together, on camera. Weekdays, we’ll post the video in segments so you can follow the conversation. Use the comments section to talk back and add your thoughts!
And now, without further ado, diving into a notoriously juicy political topic, here’s Part 1 of our very first episode of Common Conversations: Birth Control. Enjoy!
WARNING: NOT INTENDED FOR THE CONCEPT-CHALLENGED. TO BE USED AS A METHOD OF OBSERVING PRACTICES OF READING AND CONCEPT-MAKING.
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the culture of academia values the individual voice as the author of the new paradigm. the scholar’s worth comes from authoring newness. “newness” is the contribution the scholar makes to academia. if her contribution were not in some way new, it would not be a contribution. and truly, all that has ever been valuable has had this “newness”…even if that newness is simply a new spin on a very old argument.
but this is different from putting forth what must be put forth (however a discipline, academic community or individual scholar may define “what must be put forth”). newness follows from the value of the concepts offered, not the value from the newness.
“the academic” is a goffmanian front, an institutionalized, performative identity with a precedent and momentum. to put forth what needs to be put forth is not a practice that can be institutionalized; were it, the institution would in some measure drive the putting forth, and thus undermine the purpose of the putting forth.
and indeed, it does. the existence of the front of the “academic” precedes and drives the academic’s work. the job of the academic is foremost to put forth words, ideas and concepts, and secondarily to put forth necessary words, ideas and concepts.
There’s been a bunch of gender-related excitement on campus lately: Take Back The Night; an intergenerational feminist panel; an anti-feminist conference; and, Wednesday, an abysmally moronic editorial that, in a true feat of triteness, manages to concatenate Moynihanian logic, the model minority myth, and ‘post-sexism’ antifeminism (framed–how else?–through the Clinton-Obama race). In short: the good, the bad, and the Crimson.
Got some thoughts on these or other gender-related issues at Harvard? Pissed that Harvard won’t grant the Women Gender and Sexuality concentration institutional support? Heartened by the trans activist gains on campus of the past few years? Check out this essay contest through the Women’s Center, and get cracking on a personal narrative, exposé, or whatever floats your feminist boat.
The First Annual Women’s Center Writing Prize
Topic: Does Harvard - however you define it - care about gender?
Deadline: April 23, 2008.
The essay submissions are to be between 700 and 1,000 words long and can be journalistic, personal/anecdotal or creative. The pieces should be imaginative, pertinent and well-written.
ALL genders welcome to apply.
Winners will receive a cash prize of $350, prizes from the Coop and publication in the Women’s Center’s AMPLIFY! magazine.
To submit, please email your entry in a Word Document to hcwc@fas.harvard.edu. Please include both your real name and a code name of your choice - your name will be removed before your writing is evaluated. Winners announced in early May.
While I was glad to see 
There’s been a bunch of gender-related excitement on campus lately: Take Back The Night; an intergenerational feminist panel; an anti-feminist conference; and, Wednesday, an 
