June 12, 2012
"Because I’m femme–and more complicated than ‘femme’–one-lens visibility reduces me to how I look: cis, white, small, housed. I know that “visibility” erases parts of me, and so I don’t want to use it for myself or for other femmes when trying to connect across our differences. I ache to find ways to respect the needs for safety and economic survival that certain lenses of visibility gives to those who pass within it, even while I work to pull the world that privileges these frameworks apart. And, I ache to dismantle the importance of invisibility as a conversation for those to whom it does not apply because that conversation itself is invisibilizing [so meta.] This framework is a sideshow made up of mirrors, some of which reflect and some of which don’t. It’s not a useful home for our complicated, giant, many identities… Visibility fails us as a standard to understand one another with. It fails complexity, inclusion, and intersectionality. It fails trans* femmes, poor/working class folks, sex workers, people of color, dis/abled people. FAIL. There is no totalizing Visibility, and we need to stop seeking the panopticon: the looker in our head is policing our variant and vibrant beauties. We can do WAY better than in/visibility."

femmetech, “Deprivileging In/visibility” (via suzy-x)

relevant

(Source: brujacore)

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