A Day in the Life: Kismet & Mr.

On Monday, I woke up anxious.

I’d been watching Grey’s Anatomy all night and the Christina-Burke story line was stuck in my head.

Remember that one?  Yeah.  You do.  It’s the one where a young, professional woman of color falls for a mature, professional man of color, slowly loses herself in his expectations of their relationship, and gets left at the altar only because he couldn’t make her go through with it.

(yeah.  that one.)

Most of me knows that Shonda Rhimes is to black (professional) love as Tyler Perry is to black (professional) women…

[Moment]

Rainbow Reclamations DC is THIS Sunday! RSVP Today!

The movement continues.   Jess Solomon of the ground-breaking and love-making Saartje Project & Emerson Zora Hamsa, of Planet Mixtape,  Shifting Vantage Point and a Come Correct #blackfeministsex rabble-rouser, are hosting Rainbow Reclamations DC, a series of discussions, workshops and rituals for queerky girls of color:

With infinite love, Emerson Zora Hamsa and Jessica T. Solomon will host a seven-month creative, collaborative effort called Rainbow Reclamations DC!

Using the template of the original Rainbow Reclamation series that was started by the brilliant black feminist scholar, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Durham, North Carolina, the Rainbow Reclamation District of Columbia Sunday Rituals will begin this June!

Shawty Got Skillz: Picnik

One of the guiding principles behind Nuñez Daughter and iwannalive productions and, well, the ‘Net, is that making media should be as cost free as possible.  Computers and internet access are already very, very expensive (net neutrality is good for #blackgirls).  No one should have to pay hundreds of dollars for word processing or photo editing software, blog editors, and storage on top of that.  Unofficially, 90% of the tools used to make and maintain Nuñez Daughter and iwannalive productions are free of charge.

A favorite tool of ours is Picnik.

Sunday Livin’: Gil Scott-Heron

Image Credit: Olivier Lestoquoit

Gil Scott-Heron–poet, musician–died this week at the age of 62.

Via NPR:

Interlude: Come Correct…

By Bill Earle, Art Model Moon Marie (posted by Narkissa, reblogged by Come Correct)

My body is an archive. Through it I bound to others. You cannot take back that which has been given. I cannot steal my body away from another’s experience of it. I cannot lay claim to that which was shared, in vulnerable and awed resilience, with other bodies. I cannot hide it away from the ways in which it brings me back, again and again, to the women I have had sex with. This almost fearful gaze that attacks my eyes when I know that soon I will com bust in a bundle nerves. You have seen it. That angry swelling that almost hurt with its need. You have felt it. This shyness, of wanting but afraid to have that which I could never ask for. You have tasted it. This fever that rose to meet your fingertips wherever they land(ed). This fever was ours, not mine. We were sick with it, and in trying to break it we made ourselves sicker with heat.

~ M/M, “My Body is Not My Body,” Bekhsoos, 2 May 2011

(She had me at archive.)

Read, view and hear other #rwocsex & #blackfeministsex interludes over at Betta Come Correct. Happy Saturday.

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Kismet Nuñez is one of the Skillsharers of the of the 3rd Annual INCITE! Shawty Got Skillz workshop at the 2011 Allied Media Conference!  Help us get to Detroit!  Click here!

Owning Privilege, Power & Skin Color (Dark Girls Trailer)

Ahhh…..Friday!

So I was at an academic dinner last night and ended up in a long conversation about Beyonce’s three performances of her “Run the World (Girls)” single:  the video, the Billboard Awards, and the Oprah show.  Since a computer is always nearby, we pulled up all three (along with Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” video–more on that later).   The conversation reflected a serious generation gap (lots of “Why can’t she cover up” type of talk) but was engaging all around….

Until a colleague of mine, peering over my shoulder at the “Run the World (Girls)” video, tilted her head and asked me, “So is Beyonce saying sexy, light-skinned, long-haired women run the world?”

*crickets*

Well, well.  Remember this image?

Thursday Readin’: Finishing Dolen’s Wench

With slut walks, slut shaming, #KanazawaScience and Beyonce running the world , this may be a Most Complicated Week Ever for #blackfeministsex.  Whew!

So why not kick off Thursday Readin’ with a few final reflections on Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s novel Wench?

The Cool Kidz Book Club (@fortyoneacres  & @Mdotwrites) started and finished this book last year.  And I won’t even pretend I read slow.  I don’t.  But I do read with careful attention to violence and danger.  And since I research women & slavery all day, everyday in the Flesh, I need to watch how I enter that space when I am reading for pleasure.

Lucky for me, Valdez got me in and out safely.  She pushed me but she didn’t burn me up and she didn’t leave me with the happies.  She left me just where I should be after a book about enslaved women negotiating for their lives–disturbed, invigorated and ready for battle.

Reading Wench Part 3 & 4 after the jump….

Interlude: Pretty Magnolia Approved…

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Whereby Beyonce Breaks the Internet, and Kismet Drinks (Some of) the Koolaid

Beyonce broke the Internet on Sunday with a super futuristic, multimedia, high energy performance of “Run the World (Girls)” at the 2011 Billboard Awards.  She also may have shut up all the haters, myself included.

I heard the song when it first dropped and not only did I tune it out as analgesic, monotonous refuse my iPod would chew up and spit out in disgust, but the lyrics themselves hit my radar as pretty damn problematic.  Or at least the ones that aren’t the hook…which is most of the song…

Serena Williams (or Slut Shaming, Stalker Excusing & Deals with the Devil)

The photo above was described by Lisa Wade over at Sociological Images as such:

This month’s celebrity gossip included a scandal over a photo Serena Williams tweeted of herself that was quickly taken down.  The photo was of Williams in a bra and panties behind what appears to be a curtain; you can see her silhouette and some fuzzy details of what she is wearing.  It was timed to correlate with the release of the World Tennis Association’s Strong is Beautiful campaign, featuring Williams of course.

Williams took the photo down after other news groups, complained.  Not because she was naked.  Or that she was sexy.  The problem was that she was naked and sexy and because of that a man had tried to stalker and the she shouldn’t be enticing these crazy, enraged, engorged and uncontrollable men out here and if she is stalked again it will be okay because it is her fault because she put herself out there…..

Wait….what?????????

“It’s a sexy photo, she looks great and it’s not pornographic. To be honest, I would actually find it to be somewhat artistic if it weren’t for the serious business of stalking women,’  Greg Couch of The Sporting News wrote.

‘What was her message anyway? What was she trying to say? Just this: Look at me. Instead, what she was saying was this: Peep at me, but don’t stalk me. Huh?

‘Someone must have gotten to her and suggested something about common sense and hypocrisy.’”

WHAT?