Day: April 17, 2018

This picture was taken by a friend of mine and is of me at Pride in NYC in 2016.  Pride is one of the most important events for the LGBTQ+ community. I found this image to be interesting because it shows a topic/an event that has directly impacted my life. Being able to attend pride has made me so much more proud of who I am and of my community.

Throughout our course we have touched on the two-spirit identity in native American culture. The video that we watched, “Chrystos speaks at Creating Change 2011,” provided an interesting outlook on how two-spirits have been treated by the native American people. Contrary to the colonial ideas brought in from Europe, Native Americans embraced two-spirits. Chrystos said that in native American culture, two-spirits were held in high esteem and used as moderators between men and women. I chose this image for my final instagram post because I felt as though we did not spend too much time in class talking about two-spirits and LGBTQ experiences in native American culture.

 

“Squaw Jim / Osh-Tish (Finds Them and Kills Them), Crow Tribe. On the Left Is Squaw Jim, a Biological Male in Woman’s Attire, His Wife to the Right. Afforded Distinctive Social and Ceremonial Status within the Tribe. Squaw Jim Served as a Scout at Fort Keogh and Earned a Reputation for Bravery after Saving the Life of a Fellow Tribesman in the Battle of the Rosebud, June 17, 1876.” Indian Country Today, 7 Sept. 2017, indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/two-spirits-one-heart-five-genders/.

For my exhibition piece I am displaying the manifesto “The Woman Identified Woman” because I feel as though it offers an interesting insight into lesbian feminism in the 1970’s. In the manifesto, Radicalesbians describes how women should be defined separately from men. One of the main reasons why I chose this text for both this instagram post and for my exhibition piece is because I read a text called “Le Deuxieme Sexe” by Simone de Beauvoir in my French class last semester which discussed a very similar topic. I was curious about how the topic of the definition of women had been discussed on many different platforms as well as across the world. Although it was written significantly earlier than “The Woman Identified Woman,” the text talks about similar aspects about the definition of women needing to be separate from the definition of men

Woman Identified Woman: Radical Lesbians. n.d. TS Lesbian Herstory Archives: Subject Files: Part 6: Spinsters- Youth Folder No.:15230. Lesbian Herstory Archives. Archives of Sexuality & Gender, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/63tTY2. Accessed 28 Feb. 2018.