Why Does No One Talk About Sexual Assault in the LGTBQ Community?
For the most part, I exist within two realms: That of American women and that of LGBT Americans. When a friend makes the playful joke that my life is “sooo gay,” I can only agree. But it’s also “sooo feminist,” too.
These communities aren’t mutually exclusive, though. There’s a lot of overlap between that which is feminist and that which is queer. There is no need to choose sides. If anything, this sort of dual existence has a lot of perks. I have a heightened awareness of the ways gender, sexuality, and privilege all play out in my “gay-to-day” existence.
Because I care about reproductive justice, I also care about sexual freedom. And because I care about sexual freedom, I also care about consent, and the things that compromise it. …
I was lucky enough to have been raised by open minded women. Never once did the idea that girls are only supposed to be a certain way come up. Early on I learned that girls and boys are equals. I was treated as such up until middle school when all of a sudden it seemed like people had to define their gender. Sexist jokes all of a sudden became funny and I was supposed to laugh at a joke that degraded me. I was required to like make up and dress like the girls in hip-hop videos. I was no longer a person, but rather A Girl and I had to follow a whole new set of rules. Suddenly, I was defined by my gender and I had to wonder …
Nina Storey uses the phrase “21st-century soul” to describe her music, “because it’s rooted in a soul sound with bluesy overtones,” she explained to AfterEllen.com. “The music that I write is a mix of singer-songwriter acoustic stuff, and then there’s rock, and then there’s quirky stuff that’s totally out of the box.”
A Boulder, Colo., native now living in Los Angeles, Storey has been singing pretty much her whole life — professionally since the age of 12. She is self-taught, but grew up in a very musical family: Her mother is a songwriter and producer (and also acts as her manager and publicist), and her dad is a sound engineer. Her parents always encouraged her to pursue her craft.
Storey said she hasn’t talked about her sexual orientation in interviews …
Many people don’t know what being transgender means. I, not being transgendered, don’t fully understand every aspect of it either but my fiancée is in the middle of transitioning so I want to express what I do know. Here is some information I’ve gathered about people transitioning from one gender to another.
Being transgender means feeling that you are a different gender than your physical biology. It means that a person does not see themselves as the biological gender they were born into. In other words they do not feel that their gender matches their sex (their body parts). Some people (like my sociology professor) refer to a person transitioning as “man to woman” or “woman to man” because (as he describes it) people transitioning are only transitioning their gender, …
AllOut.org writes about this video: When our friends at GetUp!, an Australian campaigning organization, launched this “Love Story” video, they hoped Australians would watch and raise their voice for marriage equality. But in just a few days, over almost 2 million people around the world have watched and made it a worldwide phenomenon.
Sometimes the simplest images and stories are the ones that drive home the fundamental point that drives our work: that gay couples are no different than straight couples.
We at All Out were incredibly moved by this video – and wanted to share it with our global community. Will you take a moment to watch and share it, giving more people a chance to join the conversation? After you watch, sign our letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, asking her to push marriage equality onto the platform at her party’s national conference THIS WEEK.
Saturday Vids: K-Y Intense Features A Lesbian Couple
There’s been a lot of talk recently in the feminist blogosphere about K-Y Intense’s new commercial. K-Y has been airing commercials that feature “real” couples who use their product for some time now, but this is their first video that features a gay couple. What’s more, and what sets this commercial apart from virtually all other representations of gay couples on TV, this lesbian couple is not eroticized or featured solely for the enjoyment of a male audience. It’s actually kind of sweet. Or as sweet as what is still ultimately an attempt to sell people shit can be. Check it out:
I know a lot of people – gay and straight – who believe that bisexuality, specifically bisexual men, exist about as much as they believe that unicorns exist. It seems that there are people who believe that only women can be bisexual and that women are more fluid than men when it comes to sexuality. They believe men can’t be bisexual, but are either gay or straight. Hell, a few years ago I didn’t even believe bisexuality was real and now I identify as bi.
I have big problem with this, and I mean a BIG problem. You might ask, “Why? You’re a woman, why should you care about bisexual men?” I care because I think the gender stereotypes and gender roles that trap men are wrong.
I had no idea what was going on as I listened to NPR in perilous rush-hour traffic a few days back: I almost drove into the black Suburban in front of me in my perplexed state. I marveled at the mention of both the Middle East and homosexuality in the same byline. Recently with the ironically named Jasmine Revolution, one only heard about the chanting droves in Tahrir Square in Cairo, and the unprecedented outpouring of filial devotion in barricaded hubs of so-called “national telepathy,” as a protester interviewed in The New Yorker put it. In the very same article, Wendell Steavenson describes the unique amalgamation of socially and economically disparate people in a famously stratified part of the world:
