Well, I’m Beautiful Too

Published on by Lisa Category: Big Media has Big Problem, Blogging in the News

H/T to the ever Angry Asian Man

Boston Globe (three cheers for Boston) actually did an article featuring people of color bloggers, Blog is Beautiful. Hooray – among the noted was Angry Black Woman – and several other folks who I read and enjoy on a regular basis. I’m very proud to be in the POC blogosphere today. I’d like to think that my blog was not acknowledged because no one knows what in the hell “ecdysis” means. Oh, and that “y” in womyn? Scary.

It’s always nice to hear that the kick ass work of so many bloggers of color is heard and appreciated. Boston Globe comments that these kinds of blogs and sites “have become places where people of color gather to refine ideas or form thoughts about race relations, racial inequities, and the role pop culture has in exacerbating stereotypes.”

They are just now realizing that a lot of these blogs and writers are a zillion times more intriguing than those kangaroos in mainstream media and are doing much more complex analysis.

For their next topic, I think they’re going to predict that iPods are great accessories for music buffs.

What Makes a Hate Crime?

Published on by Lisa Category: Current Events, Sexual Assault

From Democracy Now

This is a portion of a transcript from Megan Williams and what she described as her experience when she was kidnapped, raped, and tortured for a week. Now, this is what I want to know: what constitutes a hate crime? A hate crime must be a “conspiracy against constitutional rights.” What part of being gang raped; forced to eat human, rat, and dog feces; enduring unfathomable emotional and physical violence and torture while being called racial slurs by 6 individuals does not qualify as a conspiracy against Megan’s constitutional rights?

I’ve got to be going crazy.

Or maybe I’m that naive.

Or maybe this world is just becoming a place I don’t want to recognize as home anymore.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: They were torturing me. They all passed a knife around that was — and stabbing me. I was trying to get away as they were stabbing me, and they were holding me down and stuff. And they smothered me with a bag. That morning, I had a bag wrapped around my neck and everything. They choked me. They made me eat dog poop, rat poop and human. They made me drink their urine. And each time, they braided some switches together, and they were beating me across the back. They tore my clothes off me and everything.


These are the words of a womyn who I believe.

Catching Up

Published on by Lisa Category: Life is Never General, Notes From Home Plate, Updates after Blogging Neglect

Oh, I’m so behind.

It’s been awhile since the last post and everytime I remember that I need to write something, I chide myself, “Tomorrow! Tomorrow I will.”

Of course tomorrow becomes tomorrow becomes tomorrow.

Today is tomorrow.

So, where did we leave off?

Oh yes, three weekends ago, my parents came in from Pennsylvania to visit and it was wonderful, of course. They loved our apartment. They loved Boston. They loved that my commute is 3 flights of stairs. They loved that Nick takes the train to school everyday. They loved that there is a park across the street. They loved everything.

Rog and Jan Borchers followed suit the weekend after my parents. Unfortunately, for Rob and Jan, Boston decided to show its nasty side. It was cold, rainy, and grey all day and that didn’t afford much alternatives for entertainment. Buckeye fans don’t lose heart that easily though. We poofed out the umbrellas and slugged it up to GAME ON, a bar that exclusively shows OSU games on Saturdays. We cheered the Bucks to beat the pants off Wisconsin and gleefully watched Wisconsin fans become more solemn in the bar.

I was on duty the weekend Rob and Jan were in town and unfortunately was called into work that night so I was unable to make it to dinner with them. Leaky windows from the rain, maintenance issues, and a student mugging incident will do that. Ugh.

And that concludes 5 consecutive wonderful weeks of family visitors.

This past weekend, Nick curled up to his beloved texts and powered through a 25 pg. paper while I hopped onto a bus and spent Veteran’s weekend in New York City with some of my closest friends from childhood. It was refreshing to get away from my job and to visit with some old buds who know me well. Nick was couch-slapping and texting his sorrow over the Bucks loss to Illinois. My cell phone was in orange alert danger of being thrown against a wall when I received that text. BOOO. I hate losing.

One of my RAs who loves Michigan (poor infected soul), loves to razz on Nick about Saturday’s game. Nick just shakes his head and tries to be friendly to my RAs but inside I know he wants to throw some Tressel vs. Carr statistic. I admire his benevolence. Me? I tell my pro-Michigan RAs to shove it and talk to me after Saturday.

We’re leaving for Ohio on Tuesday evening. We’ll be in Russia all day Wednesday and for Thanksgiving morning/early afternoon. After that, we’ll head to Massillon to be with my family for Thursday evening and all day Friday. Departing out of Columbus at the crack of dawn on Saturday, we’ll fly back to Boston for a wedding (one of my co-workers) Saturday night. The busy-ness never ends.

Nick and I decided that likely this will be the last Thanksgiving that we try to split between families because it’s way too hectic and we don’t get time with either family. Beginning next year, we’ll switch off Thanksgiving and Easter between families, but continue to split Christmas holidays.

So, Factoras and Borchers families beware: come 2008 you’ll either have us for the turkey or the resurrection.

See some of you next week!

The Polls Are Closed: MY RESULTS

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

It looks like your votes are similar to my personal decision to say a big phatty fat HELLS NO to attending my highschool reunion.

We’ll leave 1997 to be a sweet potato memory rolling around in my head, but I think I’ll pass on the gathering of folks. Besides, my flight leaves that early morning and to stay, it would’ve been an extra $150. Ehh.

I guess the deciding factor was realizing revisiting highschool wasn’t worth $150.

Thanks for the vote of confidence ya’ll.

1 in 3 Gay Men Suffer Abuse, the Chicago Sun Times

Published on by Lisa Category: Domestic Violence, LGBTQ, Masculinity and Gender

H/T to Gay Person of Color.

Domestic violence has shades of purple. That’s the color for the DV awareness ribbon. Domestic violence also has shades of gender bias.

While womyn are still the primary victims in a DV man/womyn relationship, the Chicago Sun Times is reporting that 1 in 3 men in a gay relationship suffers from abuse.

This latest research enforces what has been known since the beginning: domestic violence is about power and control. The yielding violence is a symptom of a greater sickness, and that sickness does not discriminate by gender.

$30 and Four Days Later, I Resurface

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

Who are we without community?

I mean, really, without community we advance in our lives, grow in our habits, and revel in our own created moments without the peril of rejection, the poetics of others, the responsibility of scaffolds, and the rising up of collected voice?

Without community, life slims to a linguine thin escapade with whom we have no one to share. Friends go out. Community comes in. Strangers may care. Community heals. Where others drop off, community flies.

This weekend I dropped $30 to board a bus, I departed from my beloved Adonis to go relax away from Boston. Bumping along the highway, I contemplated three of my closest friends waiting for my arrival in a small town called New York City. It wasn’t about getting away from a city, it was about moving toward the women who know me better than the kangaroos in my workplace.

I needed to be known. Even if just for 3 days. I needed it to be womyn who saw me receive my first D in seventh grade science and then bawl my eyes out in the coat closet. (I really don’t know if I ever recovered from that test.) I needed to be with souls who helped me prank call my crush at 14, or with whom I had spent hours on the phone while casually shrugging off time zones across the coasts.

These are the lives that hold some of the very best parts of myself, as well. These are buckets which I have poured myself into. Attending their performances in which I laughed from the second row, their graduations in which I have wept like it was my own, and their broken hearts in which I have laid my own head in despair.

They are my loves, my community, my sisters.

Where else would I be able to contemplate the life of English Bulldogs and the psychological trauma of childhood divorce in one conversation? Who else wants to know details of my reproductive organs and my new black boots?

One element of true love communities is that nothing more than the basic necessities of life are needed for rejuventation. As long as there is food, air, water, and shelter, the rest takes care of itself. And after a beautiful, connective experience with three of the most loving humans I know, I see the change in myself.

I return to Adonis more beautiful and radiant, a wellness shining from deep within. Heavier dreams, thicker rain, and golden leaves accompany me. From my skin to my pillow, drops of spirituality drip from me like an overfilled honey hive.

I return with the Truth that I had so quickly forgotten. A community of people who love you can rebuild you, polish you, refuel you and remind you of the most sacred blessings of life: love, laughter, sleep, warm food, and eye contact conversations that unfold and exist outside the human-made measurement we call time.

A Fairy Tale Ending Eludes Separated Twins, NYTimes

Published on by Lisa Category: Current Events, The Philippines Filipino Culture Philippine History

Here is a story about a Filipina immigrant who came to the states with twins joined at the head. Four years ago they were separated and received national attention and international medical media, but today still face considerable uncertainty for their future.

All the harrowing fears face this Filipina mother whose worries encompass all the scaffolds of living here in the States as an immigrant – visas, finance, medical attention, and dwindling generosity.

Read more here.

The Rape of Latinas in the US Military

Published on by Lisa Category: Feminism, Sexual Assault

Days and months that mark sexual assault awareness come and go through the calendar year. While I pay tribute and advocate for these special periods that heighten consciousness, it’s also too easy to let the everyday go by and forget that everyday, every minute, in every community in this world womyn are being raped, sodomized, and tortured.

Survival does not always follow rape. Neither does healing. Destructive silence, failing justice systems, invasive medical attention, and disbelief must first be dealt. And then, under the right circumstances and fortune, does support, resources, and healing begin.

These stories give testament to the violence that we know occurs but rarely hear about. It’s like that very dark closet in our homes that we know is there, existing in a corner that we rarely have to turn. We refuse to talk about it: rape in our military. Power has always been at the crux of sexual violence, and where does the imbalance of power and superiority exist more than in our armed forces?

It’s not just in the nations we invade where womyn are raped and tortured, but also the womyn within our own military whose stories reflect the same truth: womyn are raped and then silenced when they try to speak out. When people talk about feminism, they first don’t think of war as a feminist or “womyn’s issue.” Why not? At first, it appears the humanitarian and international rights groups have the tags on this. However, I question, what issue does not belong to womyn? What area of social injustice does not first affect and violate womyn of color in any community in this world? How does war not imprison, starve, and mutilate the lives of womyn in a militarized nation?

When I say end this war, I’m not just talking about bringing the troops home. I’m talking about saving the lives of the undocumented violence against womyn of color for which signs and peace rallies will not acknowledge.

Via aztlan

The Rape of Latinas in the US Military

*Thanks to an anonymous commenter who put forward the authentic origin of the links and I have since decided to remove the links to some of the photos.

Women of Color Feminism

Published on by Lisa Category: Feminism

This is a project I am preparing for a conference in March of 2008. Here is draft one. The purpose of this project is to feature, support, and highlight the work done by feminists of color.
Here’s a sneak preview!
Enjoy!