So they forced me to change to the new blogger. After spending hours categorizing (some of) my old posts, now the template is completely a giant mess and it won’t let me add content to the sidebar. It’s fought with me for an hour over even HAVING a sidebar in the first place.
Confession: […]

Filed under: blogging by Amy's Brain Today

You should go read her post; not because she is loving on my privilege post, but because she has a video up that is amazing. It will make you cry.

Filed under: blogging, links by Amy's Brain Today

This is a concept I learned from a workshop conducted by Jona Olsen at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival a few years ago. As you can see, this is a cage. Its bars are made up of the various -isms that hold so many of us back. Presumably there is a back […]

Filed under: graphics, white privilege by Amy's Brain Today

The feminism I know began as politics, not rules for living. To call X a feminist issue did not then mean that there was a good way to do X and a bad way, and that we were trying to replace the bad way with the good way. X was a feminist issue because […]

Filed under: feminism as politics, words from women by Amy's Brain Today

Wow, doesn’t pointing out privilege make people squirm. Whenever I try to approach it with people who have it—including myself—there’s an awful lot of wriggling. “But…but…but…”
So for starters, let’s talk about what having privilege isn’t.

Having privilege isn’t some great big cosmic get-out-of-jail-free card.
It doesn’t mean your life is perfect.
It doesn’t mean you are […]

Filed under: white privilege by Amy's Brain Today

Disclaimer: I haven’t yet seen this film. I’m not sure if I will. I have a little crush on Judi Dench, and I don’t want to watch her use her astounding talent to play some black-turtlenecked oh-so-edgy screenwriter’s or wankerish studio exec’s idea of what old lesbians are like. I know […]

Filed under: lesbian feminism, media/culture criticism by Amy's Brain Today

Filed under: cats by Amy's Brain Today

I was seriously ambivalent about attending this group, which was advertised as “Creating Peace through Dialogue.” I was hopeful, because after all I want peace as much as the next person–but skeptical, because so often things that are focused on “communication” are stubbornly apolitical. Unfortunately my misgivings were pretty well founded. There […]

Filed under: activism/organizing, land dyke odyssey, positive amy by Amy's Brain Today

“He ambulated off of the table on his own accord.”

Filed under: language, work by Amy's Brain Today

“Na” (he/she/him/her) and “nan” (possessive his/her) are sex-neutral third-person-singular pronouns invented by the lesbian-feminist writer June Arnold in her brilliant book, “The Cook and the Carpenter: A novel by the carpenter” (Daughters Inc., Plainfield, VT, 1973). As an introduction to the novel, Arnold writes:
Since the differences between men and women are so obvious […]

Filed under: language, lesbian feminism, transgender by Amy's Brain Today