Yes, the little magazine that could is growing up. We can’t believe it’s been almost a year since our premiere issue came out of the closet to carve out our (still small, still embattled, still proud) space for expression for Irish LGBTQ women. It’s been an incredible year, and for 2011 we intend to keep growing.
It is thus that we present the call for submissions for our seventh, anniversary issue! The theme for issue 7 is Stages of Life. We want to highlight the diversity in experiences of our community across ages and generations, from young people coming into their own, to people who have been with the community their entire adult lives, and those who have come out later in their lives. As always, we also encourage you to write about other pressing issues you feel you’d like to write about. And if you want to become a regular writer, talk to us about that! We are always looking for people to come onboard!
The deadline for submissions is March 16th, 2011.
Written submissions can be stories, poetry, opinion pieces, book/film/music reviews and interviews. Written submissions should be no longer than 1500 words. For written submissions, please contact us ateditor@boltmagazine.ie
Art submissions can be photographs, illustrations or paintings are also accepted. For further information and to submis, please contact artdirector@boltmagazine.ie
(We always endeavour to have a representative spread of content, and thus cannot guarantee to publish all submissions).
Hey, so there’s this, like, cool LGBTQ Irish women’s magazine, right? And they want contributors. What are you waiting for?
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: DEADLINE NOVEMBER 16th
Listen! All of you, fantastic LGBTQ women in Ireland! Are you a writer, itching to have your experience or opinions heard? Are you an artist, with works you’d like to see published in magazine form? Or, besides any of these, are you itching to work in a project by and for LGBTQ women, with expertise in community organising, copyediting, or graphic design?
Then we’ve got just the ticket! BoLT, the Irish magazine by and for LGBTQ women, is looking for submissions for our fifth issue, just in time for Christmas. For issue 5, BoLT is getting nice and hot! Indeed, Issue 5 is the sexy issue. Just in time for the cold to set in, we want to think about tucking under the covers with somebody, as the snow piles outside. As usual, feel free to submit on this, or any other topic you think is relevant to LGBTQ women.
But maybe you’re interested in helping run the magazine? No problem. We want you! We want passionate individuals who can commit to make our magazine bigger and better. We are especially looking for people with legal, financial and fundraising expertise. Even if you don’t fall under any of these, and still want to help, do drop us a line!
The deadline for submissions for issue 5 is November 16th. So get your typewriters ready, or whatever it is people use to type into these days!
For submissions of all writing, please e-mail editor@boltmagazine.ie
For submitting artwork or photography, please e-mail artdirector@boltmagazine.ie
If you’d like to volunteer, please e-mail producer@boltmagazine.ie
(Letter to the Editor of the Irish Times, as yet unpublished)
Next April, it will have been 10 years since I’ve been living in the Republic of Ireland. A lot has happened since the day I landed in Dublin Airport and was greeted by a sign, before customs, that read ‘WELCOME TO IRELAND: HOME OF WESTLIFE’.
A decade is a long time. Dublin has seen me at my best and worst. It’s the city where I fell in love more times than I can count, where I’ve shared my life with long-term partners. It’s the city where I studied, where I graduated. It’s where I’ve made friends. It’s where I finally figured out I was transgender, and decided to take steps about it.
If this sounds like pure peaches and cream, well, it wasn’t. It’s been ten years of fighting, of struggling to find my footing, along with my parents, who’ve worked really hard for us to become established here. My father has had incredible difficulty finding work due to his age. My mother had to leave my ailing grandparents behind, a constant worry for those of us who are split apart by an ocean. It does something to you, emigrating. It wears on the soul, especially when going back would be even worse. Then there’s the cultural adaptation. The food, the air, the seasons. Finding ourselves being outsiders in the place we live.
But you know, when I see Irish people talking about migration, here’s what bugs me: do you folks realise how you sound? Some say they will stay in Ireland, with phrases such as ‘as a chartered accountant with no dependents…’ What about people with dependents? What about those who have to emigrate? What about the fact that Ireland has become actively hostile to foreigners? Goodness help you if you’re not a McGrath, a Byrne, an O’Donnell, to get called for that job interview! Or how about the fact that Dublin, where most jobs are found, is a pathetic town full of desperate landlords charging exorbitant rent due to their own exploitative mortgages?
And what about those of us who want to emigrate, but cannot? Those of us who care for our elderly relatives. Those of us who have disabilities, or mental health issues which make emigration an ordeal of unfathomable dimensions.Or what about those of us who rely on state benefits for our living because of conditions that are not of our doing? We suffer from poverty and inequality on unimaginable scale, thanks to decades of neglect by a government that did not dare anger the big corporate lobbyists. A government, may I point out, that will further harm people most at risk by slashing funding to social welfare, to programs designed to get people back to work and education. Programs designed to keep people safe from the ravages of an unfair system, which are often teetering on the brink during times of ‘boom’, are facing massive cuts to spending.
No money for us, no, we’re meant to accept ‘austerity measures’. Even if that means we get poorer every day while nobody in Dail Eireann or Corporate Ireland suffers one bit for their greed, ‘austerity’ being nothing but a joke to them. Meanwhile, our able-bodied, well-qualified Irish friends debate whether to emigrate or not, as if it’s a philosophical issue to make a ‘political point’ about the state of Ireland. As if it matters.
It won’t. Not to the growing mass of unemployed people, the expanding numbers of poor people, be it in estates in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and beyond or in rural Ireland. Not to those of us for whom emigration is either an urgent necessity or an impossibility, with little room in-between, those of us for whom there is too much at stake in this small island. For us, considering emigration is not about our quality of life, but our very survival.
I am an immigrant. I was not born in the country in which I live, fitting the dictionary definition. I moved to the Republic of Ireland in 2001 following my parents’ decision to seek better futures outside Argentina, where things were going from bad to worse. Thus I fit a second, implied definition: I’m an economic immigrant.
I am also a privileged immigrant. My grandfather was Italian, so I’m an EU citizen which, according to my calculations, is somewhere around 3rd class citizenship (at least when we look at voting rights). It still means I’m automatically allowed to live in any EU member state, made easier because my citizenship is from one of the “good”, “acceptable” EU countries, Italy, and not from countries racists love to hate, such as Poland.
This conversation came up about a year ago, when a couple of anarchist friends were telling me I wasn’t “really” an immigrant. In their mind, an immigrant was someone without EU citizenship, from outside the “western” world. I responded that, while I did indeed have a privileged middle-class upbringing, I was still not from the ‘west’, because that stupidly arbitrary definition does not include South America. Anyway.
There is, nevertheless, a whole host of issues that are faced by any migrant that goes from one culture to another which is radically different, especially one as xenophobic and, until recently, homogenous and isolated, like Ireland.
Exile. Displacement. Cultural alienation. These are all things migrants know very well.
I didn’t have a strong cultural identity before coming here, I’ll admit. Argentinian society has drawbacks like any other, of which I’m very keenly aware (again with the privilege: highly educated, lefty parents who wanted high levels of education for me, too). Moreover, Argentinian middle-class culture has a strong self-hating element, wishing to be more like people from “cultured” areas of the world. It is often said by people, such as my father’s family, that Europe is ‘the civilised world’. Which only goes to show you that, no matter how many papers you publish or college degrees you have, you can still be an ignorant tosser. But I digress.
With this huge conflict and mess of ideas, I arrive in Ireland. Next year, it’ll be an entire decade since I’ve been here. There are days, days like these, in which I love Ireland. Days in which I go to my doctor’s appointment for a blood test, and wouldn’t you know it, my friend is working in the cafe across the road and fixes me a latte on the house. Days in which I go and cook dinner for my partner after we take a walk in the sun. Where I join with friends for fun, or for activism, or what have you.
But I’m depressive, and I lived 2 thirds of my life in an entire different region of the world. A lot of the time I can put it past me, but there are times when it simply explodes. The news are too boring. The country is too small. The weather is too shit. There’s not enough sunlight. The urge resurfaces, then, to start comparing everything. It’s a losing battle, one laden with emotion and little logic, which ends up in a depressing conclusion: I hate both countries, can I go live in the moon, now?
It’s a bummer, isn’t it?
It’s not helped by the fact that my first strong attempt to emigrate, towards England in fact, wasn’t succesful, and included me turning down a scholarship in one of the hardest decisions I had to take in my life. Here it was, the golden ticket. The boat away from the island. And here I was, in the island, needing to sort out my mental health, needing to sort out my gender, and realising I couldn’t just do it all. It’s not a decision I regret. Most days.
There’s something that’s been rumbling inside of me these past few weeks. You see, every four years, I become a football fan. Really! The World Cup is an event that stirs memories from my childhood, my adolescence. It’s the time even I, the big nerd who knew the names of all the Autobots but not of all the Argentine team’s players, was allowed into the ‘macho’ world of sports, way back when. So, every four years, the nostalgia comes back.
This year, I watched Argentina lost surrounded by 300 or more people from my country, in a pub in central Dublin. It was sad, but also a powerful experience. Some people had made empanadas. The place was filled, wall-to-wall, with people in Argentina jerseys. A big flag behind the bar, the language on everyone’s lips a very clear southern-cone-castellano. And there I am, the queer radical, the transsexual, just wearing my jersey, not knowing anyone in my local community. But we cheered on, we gasped, jumped, held our hands out together. Near the end of the match, Argentina got close to scoring a goal. I’m there, raising my hands, when the woman next to me, someone I’ve never met, grabs hold of my hand as Messi nears the goal. It wasn’t to be, of course.
Two weeks later, I’ve shouted Spain’s amazing win, the second hispanophone one in my life (the first one was Argentina in ’86). I’ve cheered Uruguay, my spiritual home, where I spent most of my summer holidays as a kid and teenager as my mother’s family is from there. And now, I’m sitting at home, thrawling the internet to find out if I may be able to watch the Argentinian cups online. It looks like I might.
I don’t know if I want to form part of the local Argentinian community. The spectre of homophobia and transphobia looms large. Not to mention the very strong racist and classist shit our culture has developed into a trademark. I’ve always been happy calling myself a mongrel, a child of nowhere, but the truth is that I do have an origin in that messed up, confused hodge-podge of a country where I spent 18 years of my life. Maybe it’s time to stop ignoring it, stop running away from it, and confront where I can fit it into who I am right now: an anarchafeminist, a woman, a transgender person, a polyamorous individual, a comic book nerd. A South American in Ireland.
I was going to begin today’s post with the eponymous Morrissey song. Then I happened to catch it on Youtube, and realised that not only is it one of his least catchy tunes, it’s also bland and easy. Moreover, it’s more about America the state, and not so much about America the culture. But I digress.
No, the title of today’s post is all about a debate that I have seen in the online trans* community. You’ve all seen it, the debate about the appropriation of the word ‘tranny’. It’s a debate that surfaces every few months, the latest reason is due to the release of objectionable trash flick, Ticked-off Trannies with Knives. Kate Bornstein had a good breakdown of exactly what is wrong with the film.
Let’s start with something easy. I don’t think ‘tranny’ is a term for any non-trans person to reclaim. Full stop. It’s not for cis people to use as they please, due to its background as an oppresive word used from cis people towards trans* identified people.
I’m also quite clear on not using ‘tranny’ non-consensually, that is to say, used to refer to someone who does not use it to refer to themselves, such as the whole Bear Bergman deal.
Now. The big issue of disagreement is about who, within the trans community, can or cannot reclaim ‘tranny’. One argument is that trans men are not to reclaim it, since it is an insult aimed toward cis and trans women. This is a fair point, but I don’t completely agree this is the only basis upon we can base the reclaiming of oppressive language.
I think part of the problem with the online debate is something which trans/feminist/queer activists on the internet will be familiar with: American dominance over discourse on these matters. There are many obvious reasons for that, the main one being simply the sheer number of people writing on these issues from the United States. But the fact is that sometimes, those of us outside the United States do write about this, we do chime in and have our own experiences and opinions.
Here in Dublin, my experience has been that we all face very similar challenges. Is it easier for trans men to be correctly read in their identified gender, by the random person on the street? Yes, sure. But the thing is, in Ireland we all face similar challenges. While it is not my background (I’m not Irish), it is the case that the Catholic dogmatic view on gender and sexuality seems to be a large part of the oppression faced by trans* people in Ireland.
Here in Ireland, we don’t have the luxury of splitting our community. We’re not large enough for that to happen, so we have to stick together. No matter what our gender identification is, the stories are generally similar, the same kind of oppression. And we band together against that, we come together in our struggles. We have to. There is nobody else.
For me, there is no dividing of trans men and women. It makes no sense. I would not have come out if it wasn’t for a close friend, a trans man. I owe much of my current life to people who fought long and hard, in Ireland, for things to be relatively easy for me. These trans* people of all genders broke new ground for those of us who came later. We cannot be but united.
I feel that, a lot of the time, there are things keeping us apart, within our community. But this debate is larger than simply the United States. The trouble with activism is always that, within a minority, the most powerful and greater number have a stronger voice.
I guess all I’m saying, you know. We’re here. And our story is different, but no less valid. Please don’t stop listening when we say “well, I’m not in America”. We hear about your experiences all the time. Listen to ours.
Dear readers, WordPress has eaten my Friday post twice, which has demoralised your friendly neighbourhood blogger from attempting it a third time
But Ariel! I hear you say, You should write in a separate text editor and keep separate drafts!
You’d think after years of using a livejournal, I’d know this. Thing is, I don’t, because I am stupid. As such, no Friday Blogobot today. Next Friday, though, I have a good topic lined up: sizeism in anime.
Instead, enjoy an awesome post, over at Tiger Beatdown, that sums up my views on ‘dude music’ quite well. To complement it, here’s two vlogs I made last year on what I call ‘dudespace’
Feel free to leave any comments on dude music and dudespace!
I’m quite late to the Evelyn Evelyn discussion, mainly because a) I had not processed my thoughts on it until now and b) I was unsure about seeing the show at all.
By now, I have seen the show, had the chance to have in-depth conversations with fellow Amanda Palmer fans. The results have been interesting, and have fostered a lot of thought and analysis on the art that we consume.
The main issue that came up, for me, was that of accountability of artists. I think the reason why Amanda Palmer has stirred up a lot of controversy is twofold: on the one hand, she’s an accessible artist, who corresponds directly with fans. On the other, Amanda Palmer has been seen as ‘one of us’, an artist that engages with issues of mental illness, gender, love, in a way that is very personal and which betrays strong feminist sensibilities.
The first is, I think, the sticking point. Before the age of social media, we had ‘mass’ media. This flowed in one way, from the media to the consumer. If an individual wanted to be part of the mass media, they had to work hard to gain access in one manner or another, be it as an artist, journalist, or even all the different infrastructural and technical positions.
When fans wanted to interact with musicians, they sent them a letter. Maybe the letter would get a personalised reply, if the artist was free enough to do so, and small enough to have the time. Most big bands sent standard letters back, if that. The opportunities for fans to interact or have any sort of dialog with a performer went from quite limited to practically negligible.
The same could be said about any other form of art. The world of comics and sci-fi has, for a long time, had conventions, book tours and signings. With exceptions, however, the same barrier existed, as the author would only have a limited time at a certain location to interact with fans.
All of this, of course, was changed with the internet, and further highlighted in the past few years with the explosion of social media. Many artists actively engage with their fans. The internet has also furthered what cable TV started: thousands of cultural options to pick from, every niche you can imagine. I mean, when I was growing up in Buenos Aires, we had basic cable, but most people just watched the six or so ‘air’ channels. It wasn’t difficult to have a fairly sizeable amount of culture in common with the average person. Nowadays, we are more fragmented, fostering the appearance of ‘cult’ acts that make a living from a small fanbase, case in point, Amanda Palmer.
Yet, right now, in the age of facebook, twitter, youtube, livejournal, RSS feeds with instant news from the entire world, how many artists have that engagement? How many are willing to actually have a discussion?
No, this is not me saying that Amanda Palmer is somehow exempt because she’s written good songs in the past, or had good conversations and has been quite inclusive. This isn’t about praising the fact that she’s engaging at all. I’m just saying that this fact is noteworthy.
A friend of mine said, “isn’t art full of things that are somehow wrong, racist, transphobic in their assumptions? don’t we love it, warts and all?”
I took inventory of my own interests, love and obsessions. Gundam? Utena? If you’ve ever known Kunihiko Ikuhara or Yoshiyuki Tomino to engage in an argument on the role of women or sizeism,in their works, do let me know. I listen to Astor Piazzola all the time, thousands do. The man was a genius. He also thought that us Argentinians needed a ‘firm hand’, and looked favourably on military governments that murdered thousands. Hell, about a year ago, on my (now sadly defunct) feminist comics blog, Prepare for Trouble, I was talking about how art that is messed-up can still provide basis for some pretty big fucking revelations.
The crux is that cult artists like Palmer are working on a completely different level. It is a known fact that Palmer makes her living by making money from her fans, quite directly at times, to the extent she made a rather well written couple of posts about it in her blog. This is the kind of accessible, democratic thing that artists in the punk and DIY communities have done, albeit differently, for ages. The only difference is that Palmer is a worldwide, well-known artist, and, yes, someone who responds to conversations about her art.
I want you to tell me, hand on your bloody heart, that all the art you consume, all the artists that generate said art, are free from fucked up issues regarding race, nationality, gender, sexuality, class and disability. That no artist you listen to, watch, or read has ever, ever, said fucked up shit. That you completely stopped enjoying all of their art, even knowing this. Tell me how pure you are.
I know that I cannot do that, pure and simple. Hell, I’m still fucking iffy on ‘sex changes’, a song that is getting on in years. But, see, ever since I came to live in the anglophone world, gained my feminist/activist consciousness and, later on, came out as trans*, I’ve lived with one rule only about art: take what you can get. I don’t see any point in completely becoming ‘pure’ through an arbitrary process of distilling all art/artists into whether it offends me or not.
If you must know, I do think Amanda Palmer fucked up on this one. Yeah, there’s temporarily-abled assumptions here for sure. There’s bulshit and trivialisation, as has been highlighted in the post linked at the beginning of this, and in plenty other places. Honestly, I enjoyed the Evelyn Evelyn show in parts, and I enjoy the album in parts. Just like I did with the Dresden Dolls, with 1960s episodes of Doctor Who, with Saint Seiya, Mobile Suit Gundam, and dozens more pieces of art I enjoy, I take what I can get.
That’s not ideal, it’s not the way things should be. But Amanda Palmer isn’t the first, and won’t be the last artist to do something like this. She doesn’t get a free pass for being good with other things. But all art is as wondrous and liberating as it can be conforming of stereotypes and oppressive. I don’t have an answer here, except that art is flawed, and so are artists.
Welcome to Something Fishy, the blogosphere side of Jellyfish Attack, my personal website.
This blog is intended to be a dumping ground for my thoughts, analysis and simple ramblings. I intend to structure the blog with three kinds of posts:
Transmondays: On a monday, I’ll be posting on trans issues, in Ireland or abroad
Freespace Wednesdays: Wednesdays are a free space, for me to blog about whatever, mainly news, art and music from a trans feminist perspective.
Friday Blogobot: Fridays are reserved for pure, undistilled geekery. be they essays on significant events in the Gundam saga, or my top favourite starships, serious or fun, depending on my mood.
I also reserve the right to completely and utterly break these rules. Comments will be moderated strictly, and while I have not come up with a safer spaces policy, I will not tolerate any transphobia, homophobia, sexism, able-ism, racism, concern-trolling or MRA’s (men’s rights activists).