Home > Work > Living a Feminist Life
41 " Sometimes we are too fragile to to this work; we cannot risk being shattered because we are not ready to put ourselves back together again. "
― Sara Ahmed , Living a Feminist Life
42 " So much feminist and antiracist work is the work of trying to convince others that sexism and racism have not ended; that sexism and racism are fundamental to the injustices of late capitalism; that they matter. "
43 " Jag tänker på feminism som poesi; vi hör hela historier i ett ord; vi sätter samman historier genom att klä dem i ord, "
44 " Diversity workers could be described as institutional plumbers: they develop an expertise in how things get stuck, as well as where they get stuck. "
45 " of how diversity can be used by organizations as a form of public relations. "
46 " Diversity is thus increasingly exercised as a form of public relations: “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain good will and understanding between an organisation and its publics. "
47 " The family is performed by witnessing her being wound up, spinning around. "
48 " Mainstreaming did not work. This practitioner gave no more detail than necessary to convey why it did not work: “We haven’t been able to give as much attention as we would have liked to it. "
49 " for. We have feminist centers and feminist programs because we do not have feminist universities: that "
50 " accommodated. For example, even when universities have access policies, it is often still left to students with disabilities to find out about those policies, to ask about access arrangements at each and every event. 7 The very effort required to find out about access can end up making events inaccessible. "
51 " It is deemed more polite to assume you are white. "
52 " This is what intersectionality can mean in practice: being stopped because of how you can be seen in relation to some categories (not white, Aboriginal; not middle class), being able to start up because of how you are seen in relation to others (not Aboriginal; middle class, white). 1 "
53 " What does it mean to redirect children out of fear that they would be unhappy? "
54 " To want happiness for a child can be to want to straighten the child out. "
55 " that in some parental responses to a child coming out, this unhappiness is expressed not so much as being unhappy about the child being queer, but as being unhappy about the child being unhappy. "
56 " Translation: happiness becomes proximity to whiteness. Camel Gupta (2014) notes how it is sometimes assumed that brown queers and trans folk are rescued from unhappy brown families by happy white queer and trans communities. We are not a rescue mission. But when you deviate, they celebrate. Even happy brown queers would become unhappy at this point. "
57 " You can kill joy by not looking happy enough. If "
58 " I was profoundly shy growing up, and my sense of human sociality was of something from which I was barred: almost like a room with a locked door for which I did not have the key. Perhaps that was it: gender seemed like a key to a lock, which I did not have, or which I did not fit. Looking back, I think I decided to self-girl when I went to university, as I was exhausted by not fitting or not fitting in. "
59 " I looked in the mirror sadly and waited for a different version of myself to appear. "
60 " And note then: you can killjoy not as a deliberate or intentional act; you might even be trying to participate in the joy of others. You can killjoy because you are not properly attuned to the requirements of a social system. "