howtobeterrell:

I need someone to write a story based on black mermaids and their help in saving black captives who attempted suicide by jumping overboard during the slave trade. I need this book written. I need it to have some Yoruba feels to it. I need it. and then I need a film based on it.

Not exactly what the OP is requesting but I recently read The New Moon’s Arms, a novel by Nalo Hopkinson. The main story is interspersed with an origin story for the Caribbean monk seals, positing that they were originally black captives who were transformed by a goddess and who have survived to the present day.

Here’s more about it from the author herself:

http://nalohopkinson.com/writing/fiction/books/new_moons_arms

I just keep watching this over and over.

wildunicornherd:

invisiblemoose:

This is the best metaphor for the patriarchy I’ve ever seen.

In the conclusion to a week-long series, Sinfest heroine Monique takes the red pill and discovers the patriarchy. (Click through to the full-sized version—the strings of falling letters spell out things like “male gaze”, “check out that piece”, “boys don’t cry”, “crazy cat lady”, and “what about the men?”.)

via http://blackactors.net/

wildunicornherd:

fuckyeahtoronto:

fggtlibrarian: Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford has launched a review of all city services as a prelude to a massive Toronto budget-slashing plan. Please help prevent the privatization of the Toronto Public Library, and sign the petition at http://ourpubliclibrary.to/

What I wrote:

Hi, Cllr. Perks, the Executive Committee, and Mayor Ford.

I’m disturbed by the prevailing mindset that the benefit of a service consists only in its short-term monetary profit. Saving the City money this year is good — but there are other kinds of benefits that you need to consider.

One such benefit is cultural development: what makes Toronto Toronto, and not Montreal or Vancouver or Halifax; what draws people here to visit or stay; what makes people proud to live here. And libraries are a potent driving force. In the Parkdale branch, I can find books by Torontonian authors who would be underrepresented at Chapters or Indigo. My library hosts musical events, voting booths, a community information centre, and a program where (excellent) local authors mentor and work with youth. My other favourite libraries include Lillian H. Smith, home of the Merril Collection — the largest science fiction collection in the world, named after a groundbreaking author who came to call Toronto home — and the Reference Library, where I once swing-danced till dawn on Nuit Blanche, then took the night bus (another service potentially on the chopping block!) to work.

Another sort of benefit is long-term results. The education that libraries provide does not have an instant payoff — but no education worth acquiring does. It is in the public interest to have well-educated citizens, and one of the easiest ways to ensure this happens is to make resources like books and computers as accessible as possible. I have to pay to get into the AGO [art gallery] or the ROM [museum], but at the library I can read all the books I want for free.

A third benefit is far less tangible, infinitely fragile, and possibly the most important of all: freedom. Librarians tend to care passionately about freedom of expression and information. These principles, unfortunately, cannot be preserved by market forces. Promoting them, as librarians do, ought to be considered an essential service.

tl:dr; By cutting library services we’ll be shooting ourselves in the foot.

Thanks,

N. P.

Rewatching this a lot.

The spaces for expressing queer concerns have increased across South Asia in the last decade. Much is being written about sexuality, rights and queer lives. Yet, in all of this, sex itself doesn’t get written about very much and there is a dearth of queer erotica from South Asia. Contemporary queer erotica with a South Asian focus would make these queer lives apparent in newer and compelling ways. This anthology is an attempt to present queer, sexual, regional literature that pleasures and satisfies. It is about queer sex lives, erotic experiences and passions. Queer in this anthology represents non-normative genders, sexualities, lives and perspectives. It aims to bring out voices that have been limited to smaller groups or never heard before.

What we want:
We want stories of queer love, lust and craving. Sex, however you may define it, should be a big part of the story. We want gender play, auto-eroticism, dark fantasies, monogamous and non-monogamous sex, stories of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism. We are looking for stories of deep passions, stories that complicate sex. We want stories of desire, fulfilled and unfulfilled. Stories that defy the gender binary. Stories of how you sexed up your aids and appliances. Stories on masturbation or the pleasures of paid sex. Stories of how you steamed up a bus ride, ended a clandestine affair or fucked with sex toys. Share with us stories that confront, redefine, dispute and reclaim what sex is. Let your stories queer erotica itself.
We invite you to write short stories with South Asian themes, characters and places reflected in them. We are looking for a wide expression of experiences across age, region, class, ability, gender and sexual identities. Stories can be fictional, semi-fictional and non-fiction, but we are not looking for academic or solely autobiographical writing on sexuality. Your stories will shatter the silences around queer erotic lives and encompass their diversities, so let us have them.

Who can write:
We want to foreground the queer voices of people living in or originally from South Asia. Queer includes but is not restricted to identities like lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, intersex, hijra, kothi, questioning, genderqueer, genderfluid and pansexual. Authors do not necessarily have to identify with one or more of these identities but the stories they submit should reflect non-normative genders, sexualities, lives and perspectives.

How to submit:
We are looking for short stories with a word limit of no less than 3000 words. We regret that we are unable to include poetry.
All submissions should be in English. Translations from other languages are allowed as long as the author owns the rights to the translation as well.
Please submit the story as an email attachment on a word document. Please include a title and word count.
Do not include your name or any other identifiers in the word document. As we are using a blind submissions process, we will have to reject submissions that indicate the author’s identity in the body of the story.
Authors will be informed whether their work is selected by mid-October. At that time, we will request you to provide a name under which you wish to be published and a short bio.
All selected authors will receive a one-time payment. The copyright of the story will remain with the author.

The deadline for submission is 15th September 2011.

Send your stories to queerotic.stories@gmail.com
Now get writing about the kind of sex you have wanted to read about. And get us swooning!

About the editors:
Meenu is a queer feminist activist. She has been involved with issues of gender and sexuality through women’s rights organisations and autonomous collectives for the last six years. She lives in Delhi and is an avid reader of erotica.

Shruti is currently based in Bombay. In the last eight years, she has actively engaged with the women’s and queer movements in the country. Over the years, she has worked as a researcher, social worker and counsellor.