In one survey, 65% of “average folk” respondents said they’d experienced some kind of dissociative episode. That’s better than 3 outa 5, and while I’m no statistician, that looks like a solid majority to me. So, if a majority of people have experienced dissociation, why is it such a low-volume topic? Is it because it’s difficult to speak of an experience that feels like permanent damage or that is treated as non-medicalizeable [sp]?

The ways I dissociated/survived do sometimes feel like absolute useless-yet-hateful trash and because they also feel like precious treasure I earned through great adventure and tribulation I want art and artifice with which to speak of them. [And because I earned them through prevailing over a harsh Christian fundamentalist upbringing compounded by violence and poverty, I get to use King James words like tribulation whenever I want to.]  But if I just out and say that truth, it’s really different than an art work about the experience of this prevailing: of finding my voice to say “no,” of re-entering my body, of seeing the structures that work together to create silence, obedience, and the kinds of abjection that can lead to dissociation.

When I toured this piece for the Heels on Wheels Roadshow in April, I got more responses from people than I ever had from any stage work before [well, except for the time I collaborated on a live staging of Shit Femmes Say] and in city after city, people would wait for me after the show to talk to me about my piece. I’m guessing they wanted to be seen in their unseen places, too—and they gave me that gift back. My favorite response was from a person in Baltimore who said it reminded him of a Gen5/Generative Somatics workshop he’d seen at the USSF. I wanted to give him a gold star A+ radical art-watcher award. Because it is heavily based on theory but the point of making this art and not an essay is that the theory is subsumed to the artifice and the narratives.

Art that tells a truth—a vulnerable truth especially—is really difficult to make: it digs into my shame and fear while challenging my creativity. I love this. It would be easier for me to shimmy my top off or write about other people’s problems or otherwise leverage any of the cultural forms that are available to me. But after performing this piece, when people from such a broad range of visible identities came up to me and looked me in the face and thanked me, when I noticed the dark corners in my guts lighting up, it told me that this work is important. It is so both because it acknowledges that we’re kicked out of our bodies in so many ways, and it affirms that we have the power to find ways back in.

In many cities, people asked me to make the forthcoming Motivational-Aerobics DVD Spandex Expansion that I reference, from which all the exorcises are mere teasers. I’ll need back up movers, matching spandex, lots of water, rehearsal space… I’m thinking BIG. Does anyone know Reverend Billy? I have been working on a writing piece [a toolkit/memoir] on all these messy topics: healing, resilience, bodies, embodiment, dissociation, class, fundamentalist patriarchy, gay sex. I hope with the ending of my semester that I’ll get the opportunity to turn some of these Exorcizes into actual video segments, we’ll just see about a DVD, and I feel like an exorcize toolkit is forthcoming in the not-too-distant future. But first, finals.

Why? As my proposal says, as creative and political projects grow larger, campaign wins more crucial, and the moving parts of our projects get more complicated, the need to share access and maintain diverse contributors on projects remains critically important to work that is grounded in transformative and social-justice praxis. Translation: if the barrier to participation is too user-unfriendly, folks won’t jump it, but if there is no structure in place to foster collaboration, folks *can’t* jump in.

I really hope my proposal gets accepted. For now, I’m sharing annotated links to some of the technologies I’ve found for online collaboration. If you know more, comment!

Basecamp: http://basecamphq.com/
+ very project-oriented and perhaps good for something of our magnitude because of that
+ has a place for notes, task lists
+ has a place to upload limited files
- free version is a little limited but not horrible, not free is like $50/month

> Box.net[browser, desktop, mobile] (freemium, $10-$20) Like Dropbox this also allows online file storage and sharing. It does not have the folder on your desktop that is synced. Box.net is much more focused on sharing documents and collaborative editing. You can actually edit some file formats through the web site.

Open Atruim http://openatrium.com/
- I think we need to have our site in drupal for this to be useful
+ we might really want to develop in drupal anyway
+ Has LOTS of features calendar, tasks, notes, and upload/storage abilities.
+ has a bunch of the functionality of crabgrass AND is in use so not “buggy”
+ free

Crabgrass — http://crabgrass.riseuplabs.org/
+ made by radical tech nerds for lefty collaborative organizing projects [= <3]
- and still in development but should be “out” by the end of the summer so we could use it.
+ Has calendar, tasks and upload/storage abilities.
- doesn’t have a lot of FAQ/support
+ free

Google docs https://docs.google.com
- evil empire stores our data
- buggy/slow [for me at least]
+ most folks know how to use this
- only for lists, notes and not other files
+ bascially already set up

I learned by example from other Femmes how to live fiercely, that there are roles and places for everyone — for some of us, it’s bossing and being demanding, and for others it’s the satisfaction of a job well done and being bossed. I was also shown how  visionary delegation and creativity is a special and important skill. I think it’s transferable from one setting to another, and as a community organizer and artist, knowing what needs to get done, coralling the right folks to ask for it — and doing so in a radical framework of consent, play, and demonstrating that everyone’s role is important — has served me in many instances that extend beyond the perverse and domestic.

The amazing sex-positive feminist podcasters at Audiosmut just produced an issue on Doms and I’m interviewed in it. Tune in to learn about BDSM in general, ProDomme and Dom work, and to hear my philosophies on how kink is the opposite of capitalism, and on the psychology of houseboys. The podcast is here.

If you are interested in being a houseboy [and note that is for persons of all genders] you may start by filling out my application form.

ps — I fucking love women who use technology. LOVE THEM. Fuck yes Audiosmut.

2. SISU: Who wants a new markup language — HTML and XML too cluttered or close to proprietary systems? SISU, Structured information, Serialized Units,  <www.sisudoc.org>   or   <www.jus.uio.no/sisu/>  is “software for electronic texts, document collections, books, digital libraries, and search, with “atomic search” and text positioning system (shared text citation numbering: “ocn“) outputs include: plaintext, html, XHTML, XML, ODF (OpenDocument), EPUB, LaTeX, PDF, SQL (PostgreSQL and SQLite).” All the big names in net freedom have text-based publications shared this way, including Cory Doctorow [Little Brother and others], Yochai Benkler [Wealth of Networks], Lawrence Lessig [Free Culture] and more.

3. Extreme Web Application Resources: My colleagues at CUNY’s Graduate Center have collected this page of super-useful links to many, many resources and online applications that relate to pedagogical practice and praxis. In non-academic language, that means web-based tools you can use to get ideas across!

4. NEWS FLASH: Femmes are all genders of people. Fey femmes, fag femmes, boy femmes, GNC femmes, flippin all over the place femmes, as well as lady femmes, feminine femmes, woman-ided femmes, … This post is a great description of how coming out as femme was for Jonah M. Lefholtz, a transman femme. <3

1. Feedback from the Femme Week of Action across the continent! Philly femme artist [and Heels on Wheels Roadshow member] Adelaide Windsome writes about the Philadelphia event. and includes really jello*-inducing pictures.

2. When talented folks write about their foremothers. I swooned over “Organizing for Radical Social Change: Voltarine de Cleyre and anarcha-feminism,” written by Chris Crass, about the brilliant and fierce 19th/early 20th C. lady anarchist, feminist and organizer Voltairne de Cleyre. My anarchist friends realize this is badass on a meta-level, but to translate for the rest of you, its like June Jordan writing about Phillis Wheatley; like Ginsburg writing about Rimbaud; like Thisway/Thataway writing about Gladys Bentley. Different eras, similar work, exciting to see that the connections are made.

Crass writes, in “Let Our Mothers Show the Way” from the book Reinventing Anarchy, Again, Elaine Leeder analyzes the importance of anarchist women in the development of anarchist thought. Leeder writes, “Anarchist women believed that changes in society had to occur in the economic and political spheres but their emphasis was also on the personal and psychological dimensions of life. They believed that changes in the personal aspects of life, such as families, children, sex, should be viewed as political activity. This is a new dimension that was added to anarchist theory by the women at the turn of the century.” Leeder points out that anarchist women “helped bring the domestic sphere of life within the anarchist tradition” thus they “built upon” the largely male defined anarchist tradition.
The struggle for sexual equality in society generally and in the anarchist movement particularly was carried out by many different women, but the two that made the deepest impressions were Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman…”

3. Piracy We Like: “If you support piracy, you should support looting.” What do these terms mean in a digital age? This article helps unpack rivlarous and nonrilvalrous goods [limited and unlimited quantities, basically] and starts to argue for piracy as a challenge to existing property rights — which, when ownership of “culture” is at an all-time high, individuals’ rights to build off existing works is being nullified, and most people can’t afford to take either a corporation to court for it’s aggressive use of copyright or to “protect” their own ideas, it’s about time we found new, creative, and revised ways to think about how to share, credit, and promote the world of cultural produciton and ideas. Enter: piracy.

*jello — the friendlier way to say “jealousy.”

Beyond Visibility: Illuminating and Aligning Femmes in NYC is a day-long event for LGBTQQI2 folks on self-identified femme/inine spectrums to come together in conversation, coalition, and celebration of *all* the parts of ourselves and our many communities. Events are taking place in NYC, Toronto, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, and beyond.

On Sunday January 15 from Noon-2p, femme/inine folks are invited to enjoy a Brunch and Skillshare Salon. At 2:30p join a Community Discussion moved along via transformative facilitation, where everyone will have the opportunity to contribute their needs, desires, and celebrations. This will be followed by break-out groups to continue engaging in intersectional topics such as Safety, Pride & Shame, Truth-telling, Health and more. From 5-6:30p, take a dinner break and participate in documentation including a zine table, blogging station and photo booth!

Because Beyond Visibility aims to create and hold femme/inine queer space to ally with and learn from each other, and to discuss ways to align organizing and organizations to ensure that femme communities grow as intersectional sites of gender justice, the brunch, discussion and break-out groups are free, intentionally safer-spaces, and for only femme-spectrum people of all ages, genders, and abilities.

An additional function of Beyond Visibility is to illuminate the cultural, political and artistic work of participating individuals and groups, and so all are welcomed to the two cultural events taking place. At 7pm at Judson Church, join us for a Literary Salon including Kate Bornstein, Trina Rose, Cristy Road, Nath Ann Carrera, Dondrie Burnham, Alejandro Rodriguez and more. This event is $2-$10.

Starting at 10pm, head over to Brooklyn and the Cabaret/Dance Party where Hana Malia & Glenn Marla bring biting performance art, Serpentina of the Coney Island Side Show makes sparks fly, musical stylings from Jazzmen Lee-Johnson & new work by Sassafras Lowery! DJ’s Shomi Noise and Nolita spin fierce femme tunes all night! Allies welcome to attend & dance the night away with us! This event is $5-$12.

This event is co-produced by 20 local organizers and is partnered with the bi-annual Femme Conference [www.femme2012.com/]. Beyond Visibility takes place the day the Conference releases its 2012 call for performers and workshops, and aims to generate conversations that grow local community as well as resonate into the Conference, which is taking place in Baltimore August 17-19, 2012. Co-sponsoring organization include the Heels on Wheels Roadshow [www.heelsonwheelsroadshow.com], NYC’s own glittery performance art queer femme tour, Feminist Press [www.feministpress.org/], and QUORUM Forum [http://quorumnyc.org/].

For more information on the NYC event, please visit: www.beyondvisibility.femme2012.com/

Find the event on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/beyondvisibility

A toolkit of ideas for femmes in other towns to hostess their own femme gatherings are here:
www.heelsonwheelsroadshow.com/toolkit/

When you see people speeding away on their bikes, it’s often because they’ve had the opportunity to buy a really light, nice, fancy bike and keep it well-maintained. Someone taught them how to ride it and they have lots of well-equipped safety gear. They not only know how, want to, and are empowered to ride a bike – they have all the material things they need to do it. Vroom!

Someone on a slightly cruddy bike can be passing a few people and also gets zoomed past by other folks. It’s not a great bike [but they are thankin' god – no one is trying to steal it.] They may — or may not — feel great on the bike or about riding, but they got shown how to ride, told to do it, and are pedaling away.

And then there are the folks on heavy, big clunkers with mountain tires working the FUCK out of pedaling, bent over hunched and sweating, and getting passed by every other bike on the road. They are busting ass, every trip takes them longer and it is just because their BIKES SUCK. Do not mistake this slow rider for “lazy,” this person is working perhaps harder than the speed riders. Their bike is really holding them back. But — everyone is supposed to ride! And so, they do too.

If any rider wants to make up distance to keep up with the fastest riders, it is nearly impossible. They started out ahead and almost can’t help how fast they go — their bikes are so light and the ride is so smooth. Could they dismount? Sure, they totally could. But who does that?

Is this deterministic? Well — there is the occasional individual who can pedal faster than 99% of the rest of the population on their cruddy bike and catch up in time to grab a fancy bike from someone who stopped for water; and there is also the person who’s cousin gets bootleg bikes and receives a fancy bike for free — these few individuals are held up as an example of what the rest of us could do if we only were actually trying. See! It’s not deterministic, you can totally change your bike!

Any and all of these bike riders have time to practice riding and get all muscled up, or not; have interest in or reluctance to riding; encouragement or ridicule while riding; narrowly-avoid or get hit by cars, or never have to ride in traffic… and this is all about the riders.

Then there are all the people not riding: bikes do not fit or work for all bodies. Some folks get told they are too unintelligent to ride, look silly riding, or wouldn’t like riding so they shouldn’t try. And hey – some people don’t even know there are bikes, never seen ‘em.

My question: Can we never all meet at a park and dismount for a bit to, like, catch our breath and realize that all this pedaling is getting exhausting? Is this what a nationwide general strike might look like?

Next time: Mini-treatise on class, somatics, and why I’m not excited about champagne.

**I bike cuz it’s free, it clears my head, and instead of having panic attacks on the subway, I get to just think about pedaling and things in the world. [I am not looking forward to the winter.] And lately — due surely to my graduate school reading on intersectionality, oppositionality, experience and freedom; all the fucking Marx, Frankfurt school and Birmingham Centre theorists I can handle; structuralists and post-structuralists, hypertext theory and first-person labor narratives, that I am thinking about structures of power, entitlement, access, privilege and agency. A lot.

Blender – 3D arts, animation, modelling. create films, animations, movies
GIMP** – hi-res, high-end graphics application package. print photo editing [registry.gimp.org - extensions and plugins]
Scribus – desktop publishing, professional page layout
Kino [for linux] video editing
Shotwell [linux-only] photo manager/publisher
Latek – academic publications, set up templates
Inkscape — vector-based image development [aka FLS Illustrator]
Audacity** – audio editing. one of the best!!
Aviary — server-based, more user-friendly and more shareable
WordPress** – self-server or web-server-based
Bluefish — HTML editing
Jack Pulse — real-time audio, multiple devices

And here is one example from the Occupy the Internet .gif blast from Nov 1st. And we’re looking at these folks, where you can get the .gif <embed> code if you like…

I have been wrapping the two around my resilient self ever since I escaped the mean evangelicals who raised me* and as I live with the everyday tragedies of being treated “female” in a society that has some very fucked up attitudes towards femininity.

My newest piece is a natural development out of my active interest in discoverable routes to embodiment in Western society, and physical exercise as a site where I have come back into my body when nothing else was working. I see the two playing together as a route to healing that is covered up tragically in language of sizeism, fat-hating, perpetual youth-seeking, tacky dance moves, expensive DVDs and the strange cult of celebrity that is the Exercise Teacher Superstar.

Exorcise takes the darling of Homorobics and crosses it with a healing justice mentality, a generative somatics modality, and wraps it all in great spandex.

by Laura Beeston for 2Bmag

During the piece, which looks a lot like an aerobics class I am teaching and is played as audio directions I am , there are a series of exercises that I show the audience with the intention of spectators becoming participants. These exercises include: Taking Space and Saying No Arm Circles; Melt Your Pussy-Ice Squats; Shield/Invisibility Cloak Lunges and Circles of Closed Communication.

Part of this project involves inviting people to participate with me: I did a push-up based series in December, and I’m interested to develop works that have deeper participatory elements than an individual challenge — though I like those too. Drawing strength from endurance-art tactics of artists like Marina Abromovich, the piece is intended to go on “until I have to stop,” but its presence in cabarets up to this point has given it time tests of about 8-10 minutes. For VENT the time limit will be extended further towards the pieces’ natural lifespan, which is as yet unknown.

This is no academic exercise — I needed this healing to work, and I need it to keep working. I need deeply physical experiences to push out the ways that my family’s version of xianity tried to scare, reason, or beat out all my ideas and courage and replace them with demure, unsure self-effacing. I need self-determined physicality, including sexual expressions, regularly as a way to get into my skin, on my terms. I need to breathe in the ways I am part of a world that also needs healing from many forms of oppressions; the ways I am neither alone nor broken.

This piece queers and plays with representations of femininity and Appropriate Activity** — I do not look “good” while working up a bustling heart rate. I turn an awkward shade of red and get sweaty. Makeup runs. Sequins and glitter fly off. In this, the piece reflects the ways we can ask ourselvs to do better then “beauty,” and traces towards that which Mia Mingus recently exhorted us to do: “move to toward the ugly” as a form of deeper inclusion. All bodies, moving through, can be together in this.

This piece premiered in Philadelphia at Geppetta‘s Lemonade Sweaty Summer Series on July 17 and went international in Montreal at the Meow Mix for Perver/cite August 3 with Jordan Arsenault, Alex Cafarelli and other artists. One function that is so exciting to me as an artist is finding these kind of performance spaces where we can experiment with new works; I’m thinking Rebel Cupcake is also surely on that list. Next this piece is upcoming at Brooklyn’s VENT Festival on Sept 25, as curated by the multitalented Maya Suess.

*Ruth O’Brien referred to this phenomena of radicals coming from fundamentalist/conservative homes as being “raised by wolves.” No offense, wolves.

**I’ve also been thinking a LOT about the kinds of things Women Are Supposed To Do To Heal From Abuse…but that’s a whole other writing piece.