Kristine Virsis - Alice

Last week I went to an event at Bluestockings, a radical bookstore in lower Manhattan, for the book Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today, based on a traveling exhibition of amazing protest art.  A group of artists included in the book gathered to share their thoughts on making art to promote social justice and global equity.  Despite being a broad survey of issues and voices (the book is incredible), the topics of sexism, reproductive rights, sexual assault, patriarchy, and other similar issues were not very prominent among these images.

THE MESSAGE IS IN THE MUSIC is a 2-day event on Friday March 5th and Saturday March 6th at Sarah Lawrence College in the Monika A. and Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Visual Arts Center.  This conference is so exciting because it incorporates a mix of many different feminist narratives and viewpoints, touching on race, sexuality, gender, and culture.  For the Birds partially grew out of a response to the sexism we experienced in the NYC Do It Yourself punk scene, so it will be exciting for us to hear about similar narratives from folks on the front lines of feminism and musical culture.  We are also super excited to see our own Kate Wadkins moderate the panel on Riot Grrrl!  We will be tabling on Saturday March 6th, so check out the schedule below if you are interested!  Map and directions can be found here.

The SCHEDULE:

Friday’s Opening Plenary: 6–8 p.m., Keynote Address from Carmen Ashhurst, former president of Def Jam Recordings and Rush Communications, and author of the forthcoming book Selling My Brothers: The Movement, The Media, and Me

Saturday’s Plenary Panel: 10–11:45 a.m.

Intersections: Music and Activism

• Mimi Nguyen [University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Missing Persons]
• Fiona Ngo [University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Punk in the Shadow of War]
• Christa D’Angelica [Assistant Law Clerk, New York Supreme Court, Beyond Bikini Kill: A History of Riot Grrrl, From Grrrls to Ladies]

Breakout Session I: 1–2:30 p.m. featuring several panels:

“Give Me Body”: Reading the Latina and Black Female Body in Popular Music

• Shanna Benjamin [Grinnell College, Hot Sex on a Platter: Lil’ Kim and Reconstructions of the Black Female Body]
• Lakesia D. Johnson [Grinnell College Black Queer Embodiment and Desire in the Music Videos of Me’shell Ndegéocello]
• Michelle Rocío Nasser [Grinnell College Reading Shakira’s Body: Signs of Colombianidad in “Hips Don’t Lie”]

Video Vixens

• Loron Benton [Georgia State University, “Shake What Your Mama Gave You”: The Representation and Performance of the Female Body in Hip Hop Videos]
• Zoe Spencer [Virginia State University, Shake Dat Azz: Deconstructing the Sociopolitical Foundation of the Neo Jezebel]
• Marita Buanes [University of Agder, Norway, Flip It and Reverse It: Gender and Race in Missy Elliott’s Video “Work It”]

Riot Grrrl [MODERATED BY OUR OWN FTB MEMBER AND SARAH LAWRENCE WOMEN'S HISTORY STUDENT KATE WADKINS!]

• Julia Downes [University of Leeds, “Resist Psychic Death”: The Cultural Politics of Riot Grrrl and Queer Feminist Subculture]
• Marisa Meltzer [Freelance Writer, The Girl Power Revolution]
• Jamielynn Varriale [SUNY Albany, Embodying Riot Grrl: Fleshly Representations and Bodily Experiences and Images in the Work and Career of Corin Tucker]

Round-Table Discussion The Cultural Mode of Masculinity in the American Pop Patriarchy: An Interactive Round-Table Discussion [Jared Demick, Kristin Evans, Amber West, Jeffrey Wickersham, University of Connecticut]

Breakout Session II: 2:45–4:15 p.m. with the following panels:
Women Rap

• Emma Carmichael [Vassar College, Female Subjectivity within Hip Hop: Rappers, Lyrics, and Performance]
• Iresha Picot [Temple University, Doorknockers: Black Female Rappers Knockin’ on a New Intellectual Discourse]
• María Santana [University of Central Florida, Her Sexy Stilettos Give a Women’s Point of View to Reggaeton: Ivy Queen and Latin Urban Music]

Performing Gender

• Nafeesa Nichols [University of The Witwatersrand (South Africa), Gendered Identities in Black South African Creative Expression: Are We Running in Circles?]
• Barbara Anna Panuzzo [London South Bank University, Writing Performative Identities: Discursive Traits of Femininity in Hip Hop Journalism]
• Malaena Taylor [University of Connecticut, Gender and Activism in the Punk Subculture]
• Jessica Ronald [University of Louisville, Potential Feminist Performances of Masculinity in Music: The Hip Hop Subculture of Nerdcore]

Divas

• Brian Q. Torff [Fairfield University]
• Hilary Torff [High School Academic Core Teacher, Marymount Academy, Montreal, Canada, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Rosetta Tharpe: Black Women Who Shaped a Musical Future]
• Elisabeth Wronzoff-Dashkoff [Independent Scholar, Who’s That Girl?: Pop Stars as the Apogee of 1980s Feminist Discourse]

Say What: The Message in the Music

• Vankita Brown [Howard University, Me’Shell Ndegeocello and Womanist Music]
• C. Chic Smith [Howard University, African American Women in Hip Hop Music and Videos]

Breakout Session III: 4:30–6 p.m. :
Workshop: Sophie’s Parlor Radio Collective, Facilitated by: Lakeisha R. Harrison, Kimberly C. Gaines & Andrea Thompson

Panel
Love, Sex, and Magic: Hip Hop Feminism as a Tool for the Creative Renegotiation of Black Female Desire

• Emily Unnasch [University of Alabama, “F Love”: Sex, Violence, and Hip Hop’s Turbulent Struggle to Define Love against the Grain]
• Brittney Cooper [University of Alabama, “She’s a Movement by Herself”: Black Sexual Politics and Independent Black Womanhood in the Hip Hop Feminist Era]
• Maigen Sullivan [University of Alabama, “They Dykin”: The Commodification of Lesbian Desire in Mainstream Hip Hop and Underground Attempts at Reclamation]
• Tammy Owens [University of Alabama, “It Must Be Your Ass”: The Commodification of the Female Booty from Slavery to the Present]

Round-Table Discussion
Rhymes of Dissent: Identity Politics within Underground Hip Hop with

• Viviana Bernal [Sankofa Institute for Youth Development Inc.]
• Katie McGhee and Maria Roumiantseva[Montclair State University]

WomynSong

• Amity Bryson [Avila University, Women’s Music Festivals, Politics or Commodity?: The 1970s Experience vs. Lilith Fair]
• Elizabeth K. Keenan [Columbia University, If Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville Made You a Feminist, What Kind of Feminist Are You?: Heterosexuality, Race, and Class in the Third Wave]
• Andrea Fehring [University of Northern Iowa, “Womyn Only Space at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival Is Separatism Based on Biological Sex, in Fact, Feminist?”]

The auction helps provide much needed scholarships for young rock stars to attend camp. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $75 for a VIP Ticket that includes pre auction reception with Kathleen Hanna and Kaki King, plus complimentary hors d’oevres & cocktails from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, gift bags, & mini drum lessons! The event will be hosted by Mr. Murray Hill with performances by Kaki King, Saffire and Erin McKeown. Come support!

Disturbing (yet not entirely surprising) information about juvenile detention in NYS started coming to my attention in my professional life. By chance I’ve also been reading Victoria Law’s Resistance Behind Bars which turned out to be key in keeping a radical feminist perspective while researching juvenile justice in the context of a liberal work setting. Law reminds the reader at the beginning of Resistance that she is not advocating for a more humane prison system, but rather to “strive for a better world – one in which prison’s are obsolete.” I would tend to agree that the prison system for adults and juveniles cannot simply be reformed into a slightly better place. I also believe that the struggle for some changes which can prevent the most egregious violations of human rights, such as the shackling of birthing women’s legs and the level of physical restraint which lead to the death of 15 year old Darryl Thompson at Tryon Boys Residential Center in November 2006, are crucial to advocate for.

The merger of the DJJ into ACS, which is the most recent reform to the juvenile justice system and possibly the first of many to come in the near future, is aimed at adding a therapeutic focus for juvenile detainees rather than having a city agency whose central aim is to manage detention. This merger does have some degree of logic considering a disproportionate number of young detainees have had contact with children’s services prior to detention. Thus the merger will streamline agencies and institutions that young people and their families must navigate Further, ACS will be recommending community based alternative programs to judges in an effort to reduce the population of young people in detention. However this merger seems to lack an explicit plan for prevention of conditions that lead young people to court involvement. Thus the question remains, “how can we rehabilitate individual youth?”, rather than “how can we create social change that will support positive youth development while deconstructing the stereotype of young people of color as delinquent?” And back to Law’s question, how can we make prisons obsolete?

The focus of discussions about juvenile justice often focus on the experiences of young men. Although young women represent a smaller amount of the population in juvenile detention centers – in 2008 there were 243 young women admitted to placement out of a population of 1,632 (Citizen’s Committee for Children report, December 2009) – their experiences cannot be assumed to be represented by stories of what their male counterparts are experiencing. Because the stereotype of juvenile delinquents is so centered around young men, visibility of young women in detention is reduced. This is easily seen in coverage of abuses of young people in the media. Despite the nearly equal amount of examples in the DOJ report of abuses that young men and women experience in detention, news articles focus on young men. For instance a recent article in New York magazine was entitled “The Lost Boys of Tryon.” The article does include one example of a young female detainee being sexually abused and becoming pregnant as a result. Yet a story of one young woman experiencing sexual abuse in detention does little to speak to the systemic problem of sexual abuse within prisons. Nor is there representation of the results that imprisonment can have to exacerbate trauma experienced before incarceration. This is of particular importance when considering that young women experience abuse at higher rates than young men. Because sexual abuse takes power away from the victim/survivor, the experience of imprisonment, in which autonomy is taken so completely, may be triggering in ways that have not been widely acknowledged.

This scholarly attention is a giant step forward for Riot Grrrl as a movement, and to read about this news on The New Yorker’s blog The Book Bench was a real brain bomb. Author of the blog entry, Macy Halford, posits that archiving these papers means Riot Grrrl has passed into history, bringing sad news with the good news. I beg to differ! Something’s been aflutter in the girl punk scene, especially in our very own Brooklyn, NY, for sometime now, as collective bird Kate writes in her article Girls Germs: A Brooklyn Scene Report, printed in the October Issue of Maximum Rocknroll.

As if NYU hadn’t already won our (speed) hearts with this important archival, NYU Press also recently published Alison Piepmeier’s book, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. The book is the first of its kind to fully explore the connection between zines and feminism for the past two decades as well as their joint role in our future. Piepmeier is the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, South Carolina.

IN BIRD NEWS: We will be tabling with our distro at the Anti-Valentines Riot Grrl Cover Band Show!

No, seriously, we’re not going anywhere.

Us here at For the Birds HQ have made a decision to be more present in the internet world. At the moment, the majority of us are in grad school, in touring bands, or just busy with other projects, and we decided this would be a good way to remain constantly active. So let’s get this thing going!

First, happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Racialicious posted a great collection of his quotes earlier today.

Lots of our work in For the Birds has to do with queering social spaces, specifically, spaces that are assumed to be safe or “queer” in some way already. I am constantly wondering what is going on nationally and internationally with queer and/or girl-made music or movements: where is our riot grrrl? Why does riot grrrl seem to be so ghettoized in punk history? Lately, I’ve been turned on to some really rad blogs documenting riot grrrl and queercore music or movements that have happened in the past but are also happening currently. Here are my recommendations:

Stacy Konkiel a.k.a. “SISSY SOULPONY” from the Bay Area has a virtual How To for queercore & riot grrrl called SOUL PONIES. She covers current news about riot grrrl happenings as well as posting mp3s of both current bands and older bands that may or may not be extinct. Here’s an excerpt from the SOUL PONIES manifesta:

Because independent record labels are dying off and are being sold to megacorporations more and more often;

Because queer independent record labels, by their “niche” nature, are especially susceptible to closing;

Because we often lose the work of amazing LGBTQ artists to the dollar discount bin of the used record store when queer record labels go under;

Because we wish to preserve the legacies of important riot grrrl and queercore musicians for present and future generations to appreciate their work…

Young Creature is a self-proclaimed blog focused on exposing and supporting Queer musicians, artists, filmmakers, writers, troublemakers, and earth shakers.

If you can think of more, please comment here and let us know what’s up!

TONIGHT
SUNDAY DECEMBER 13TH, 2009

Benefit for Girls Rock Camp Alliance!
with

Death First
Layers/Quake (Philly)
The Homewreckers
Each Other’s Mothers

Tabling by For the Birds Collective

1087 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY

$5-10 sliding scale donation
8PM
See you there!

Hey folks! This event is gonna be awesome. It’s also the first event For the Birds has tabled since August, so come by and get your fill of feminist media. We have ALL OUR ZINES in stock, as well as all of the comps:

FTB-001: The Big She-Bang
FTB-002: Gimme Cooties
FTB-003: The Best of the Nest (with AMAZING artwork by Carolina Paquita)

That being said, this is officially the first time The Best of the Nest comp is available outside of The Big She-Bang IV. We are super proud of it & know you won’t be disappointed, so come to the show, support the Girls Rock Camp Alliance, and pick up some tunes by friends of the Birds!

You may have been wondering what For the Birds has been up to since the Big She-Bang in August. Upon reaching the one-year mark of organizing together, we took some time to explore internal group dynamics, discuss conflicts and patterns, and strategize for how we could improve ourselves in the future.

The Big She-Bang IV also represented the beginning of our efforts to reach beyond the D.I.Y. punk community to connect with other New York city-based feminist projects, artists, and musicians. While reviewing your feedback from the Big She-Bang survey (thanks for participating!) and discussing our own thoughts about the event, we began a productive discussion about For the Birds’ racial and ethnic composition, and the types of climates we seek to create at our events.

While we strive to create safety for all types of feminists coming from diverse racial backgrounds, gender presentations, sexual orientations and ways of life, we realize that we will always have more to learn about how to bridge the gaps between different feminist communities here in New York. We discussed how punk has the potential to create a climate of “whiteness” that feels alienating for non-punk-identified folks, as well as dynamics of privilege and discomfort within our own collective.

We hope to continue these internal conversations as we once again begin to actively engage in booking events, tabling, and outreach after this period of reflection. We have identified several goals to guide us in the coming year:

+ To reach out past our usual comfort zone of D.I.Y. punk to plan, collaborate on, and attend feminist events from different communities in the city.

+ To enrich our distro with zines and pamphlets from even more voices usually marginalized by mainstream society, such as feminists of color and transfolk.

+ To implement structural changes in the ways we organize together so that workload is evenly shared, all voices are heard, and existing safe space policies are easier to maintain.

+ To keep race and privilege on the table in our conversations and in our organizing, through the use of an anti-racist ally Birds subgroup, readings and discussions.

+ To make more contact with other feminist groups in the form of meetings, co-sponsoring events, and keeping each other informed of our projects so that we can strengthen the New York City feminist movement!

That said, we are back in the game and would love to hear from you about exciting feminist events you would like us to be a part of! Stay tuned for updates to our website, additions to our distro, and events which celebrate the diversity of feminisms in our city. While we definitely still hope to maintain a feminist presence at D.I.Y. punk events, we are especially interested in seeking out other subcultures, styles of music, feminist agendas, creative projects and modes of expression. Please get in touch!

MUCH LOVE,

FOR THE BIRDS COLLECTIVE + DISTRO
forthebirdscollective@gmail.com
http://forthebirdscollective.org
http://myspace.com/forthebirdsnyc

Check out our amazing poster, made by Tamara at No Guts No Glory!

Here is the schedule we’ve come up with for The Big She-Bang IV. Obviously it’s tentative, but it’s a framework for the day.

SHE-BANG SCHEDULE

10:30AM | Breakfast

Workshops:

11am-12:30pm | Queer Eye for the D.I.Y.

12:45-2:15 | Feminist Urban Mobility

2:15-2:45 | Lunch break / Art show break

2:45-3:45 | Women & Prison Resistance

4:00- 5:00 | Sexual Assault & Accountability

5:00pm | Dinner break & raffle!

Bands begin at 6:00pm:

Ina! Ina!
Kate Ferencz
Full of Fancy
Inertia
Zombie Dogs
Little Lungs

See ya there!