#FemmesOver35 Represent!

This is a historical and archival piece to document the evolution of the #FemmesOver35

I never thought I'd be someone who would find a hashtag important, yet the past several years I've seen how hashtags are a new form of media making and community. As an educator for the past 20 years, I've been excited to learn what youth have to share and to swap the expected roles in the classroom.

As I learn the new apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Periscope, and the new updates/layout for Tumblr, it's femmes of color who have shown me the way to practice and stay connected. It was from the use of the #FemmesOfColorVisibility on IG (Instagram) that I began to explore more what was possible in this space that seemed much like what early Tumblr set out to create: a microblogging space centered on images.

Most of the summer of 2015 I spent with two femmes of color: Bilen and Leah. We decided we would try to meet weekly for Femmes Over 35 dates in the city. It's a new kind of struggle to be single (as two of us were), media makers, queer femmes of color, working class, and children of immigrants, and building a life as an aging femme who doesn't have strong health insurance, money saved, or a skill/craft which folks will pay us what we are worth.

I find myself in this odd space of being an aging femme, a femme elder in many of our circles. At a time when our femme elders do not live beyond 40, die of preventable cancers like cervical cancer, are murdered, who do we have to seek support and advice from? How do we build community with elders if they are not surviving? I needed to change that because I realized in my 20s I never considered needing to see aging femmes of color. It never occurred to me that I would miss us, that I could imagine a life after 30, it seemed so far away. And now, here I am over 35, almost 40, and I don't see much of us.

When I first used the #FemmesOver35 hashtag it was June 23, 2015, the evening that Janet Mock received the inaugural José Estaban Muñoz Award from CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY (of which I amon the board). I had attended the event with my homegirl Bilen. We were shy as we ate cheese and crackers figuring out when a good time to take a selfie with Janet Mock would emerge. As we walked to the subway together, Bilen and I shared our adoration of the evening.

And then this happened tonight #femmesofcolorvisibility #FemmesOver35

A photo posted by Bi (@latinegrasexologist) on Jun 23, 2015 at 6:07pm PDT

When I posted the image of the three of us on IG and wrote "And then this happened tonight. #femmesofcolorvisibility #femmesover35" it began. Almost every post since then I've shared has included this hashtag. I added this hashtag during a time when I had been broken by an ex, not heartbroken, not in pain, but fully and completely broken. Every part of what I knew about myself had been cracked, shattered, and displaced. Documenting my life was part of a larger process of coming back to myself. It is still a process. During that process I thought a lot about what I could do to make the pain end permanently. I didn't have a plan, but I did have that option on the table as one choice. Some may say all the other options are better than a permanent one, and that may work for some. But when you are lonely, and I mean nobody is coming over to see you because you live so far away, or all your friends are at that mid-level career step up to senior that they are working their tails off so they can't caretake or talk, and hungry for affection and touch, someone to help remind you those pieces of you that feel so tender and sharp; they mean you are still alive right now. To feel this way is to feel alive at times.

That's what I tell myself. Sometimes I believe it more often than others. Other times I know it to be true through and through. Each foto that i post that uses the hashtag is one that I say to the world "Today I chose to be here and live this life."

Since then there have been 105 posts from mostly my femme of color community: Bilen, Amita, and Laura Luna. The fotos have more femmes of color in them like Jess, Cherry, Leah, my mom, Mollena, Trina, and the folks who we spend our time loving.

The hashtag is unapologetically queer, femme, of color, over 35, sexy, fly, brilliant, fat, strong, courageous, fantastic, and challenging all the stereotypes about what and how #femmesover35 look, feel, and live. We are shape shifters, we are survivors, we are community, we are aging, and we are here.

Maybe some media outlet will cover the hashtag, maybe not. That's not the goal in making our own media. I post this so folks know what to look for and how to find us. It's important to know we exist, we are seen, and we are affirmed. Maybe when the hashtage gets over a thousand fotos folks begin to pay more attention, until then I know my femme of color community is watching and posting! We made this what we need it to be.

#FemmesOver35 Represent!

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month

Find out more about how you can work with youth in your community around these topics and check out this video created by youth about these topics.

Grading As Media Making

cross posted from my Media Justice column

Imagine it: me surrounded by a never ending abyss of papers to grade with only 2 weeks left before the semester ends. I’m writing this post because it speaks to my life right now. Now, I told my students I would have their papers to them by last Monday, only one of two classes received them. I was sick for most of a holiday break we had and could barely lift my head up. This limited the amount of papers I got to grade. Now, grading seems to never end!

There were math equations I would do to see how many papers I had to grade a day to get through them all. How much time to dedicate to each paper. This isn’t anything new. However, I realized that when I grade a paper, especially a formal paper a student submits, the comments I’m giving them, the things I’m writing in the margins, this is all a form of media. My goal is to help Amplify readers understand this form of media and to get a perspective from an educators point of view on grading (perhaps it may encourage you to go to office hours for support, ask for clarification, or see your teacher as a person too!).

I have a love/hate relationship with grading. I see how it may be useful for many students, schools, organizations and professions. However, I believe there are multiple ways to assess if someone is being critical and analytical around certain topics, to value the quality of work and participation they bring to a classroom. These are some of the things that make up a grade for a student in my class.

Grading is my least favorite part of teaching. No matter what I’m teaching, I dread grading. I think in our society we have created a grading system that is set up to destroy individual students. I have to remind myself that I don’t want to be the educator that broke a student’s spirit or drive because of what or how I’ve written a comment on their paper as I grade. There is also a balancing act between helping students learn how to improve their writing and expressing their thoughts and learning from constructive criticism.

Now, I know all too well how it hurts and destroy’s ones motivation when they are told they are not a good/quality writer or that their writing is poor. It has happened to me numerous times and it probably will again. However, it is from these experiences that I try to really be honest, thoughtful, and grade from a place of love. Not just love for education, but for helping students evolve and grow. A love for the person who w told their writing was not worthy or good enough (i.e. myself). A type of love for the work I do and for the things I do that I don’t always love but that come with the work. A love that is challenging yet rewarding at the same time.

I’m reminded of the Allied Media Conference that I attended this summer. There was a workshop titled Editing as an Act of Love that had my good homegirl Maegan Ortiz of Vivir Latino on the panel. Maegan had posted a video that would be shown during the session by Lisa Factora-Borchers and her experiences editing an anthology, Dear Sister Anthology, for survivors of sexual violence. Check out her video below.

Allied Media Conference Workshop: Editing as an Act of Love from Lisa Factora-Borchers onVimeo.

I really love Factora-Borchers 5 guidelines of editing as I think it speaks so directly to grading as well. These guidelines include:
1. You’re dealing with work that came from someone.
2. Like love, editing is a 2-way street. (with many, many detours).
3. Like love, editing cannot be about power, ultimatums, or one way. It’s often visionary, and takes mounds of patience.
4. Editing is standing shoulder to shoulder, not head to head.
5. Above everything else, editing is all about the relationship.

This video really helps me put into perspective my love/hate of grading. It’s not that I hate or dread it as I think I do, it’s that I’m invested in grading in a way that is not often discussed or taught to educators. I have high expectations for myself, my students, and the effort I put into assessing their work. I value the relationships I build with my students and I would like to be a part of a positive memory of what education, especially higher education, may look like for them.

As someone who enjoys writing in the margins of books and texts (that I own, although I do love the idea of writing in the margins of books owned by others or at the library even though that’s a no-no, but imagine what we can learn from those notes by others! And I’m not the only one into marginalia! The historical context alone is exciting to me, but I digress), I enjoy writing in the margins of my student’s papers as well. It is a way I connect with my students and with the habits I embrace and use when doing personal reading. It’s one way that I find comfort in a difficult task.

I have over 20 papers to grade and three times as many homework assignments, so I’ll keep this short. But I do want to note that those of you who may find yourself in a similar situation, here are some useful tips for grading that a friend provided me via tumblr. I most definitely make a not to avoid red pens, I usually use purple, pink or teal. However, there are times when those pens run out of ink and I must resort to the traditional red, but it’s a rare occasion. Do you view grading a bit differently? What are some of the ways you cope/manage grading?

What I Learned When I Made My First Zine

cross posted from my Media Justice column

I made my first zine ever in life over last weekend. It became the program for entrepreneur, author, and artist Erika Lopez’s east coast The Welfare Queen tour that is on limited run in NYC for Latino Heritage Month. Erika had given me all of her hard drives that had all of her artwork on them and that was amazing!

A zine is very do-it-yourself (DIY) form of media making. Some folks say zines are similar to magazines where they have stories, interviews, poems, words, images, and other forms of text similar to how we read books and magazines. Sometimes the text is handwritten, but it is definitely a way for the use of radical typography. So, even though I was making a program for an off Broadway show, it worked out.

I’ve read so many zines, have many friends who create them, and have toyed with the idea of creating one and this seemed like a good time. One of the ways I found this to be a useful activity was that I only had to credit all of the artwork to one person, Erika. That made things so much easier, as does having access to all of her artwork. When the artist supports you using their art, it’s such a great way to begin.

I asked one of my homegirls Aaminah (whom I’m trying to get a Media Makers Salon interview with where she shares her background, interests, and experiences creating zines) for some mentorship and guidance for creating the zine. She sent me to this post she created online about making zines. I specifically wanted to know how to set up the pages for making copies of the zine (my zine was all black and white).

Here are some lessons I learned:

1. For the zine I was making, spelling is important (unless part of your media making is to challenge conventional modes of spelling and language/grammar rules).

2. It’s important to pace yourself while creating the zine. This means setting realistic goals. For me this was also connected to planning and printing things out well.

3. Organization will really help you create the product you want. I knew I had to have certain elements, logos, and text in the zine, so I made sure that if I didn’t want to use my own printer and ink to get to campus or the library early.

4. Embracing a “gritty” look, or not being adverse to such, will help when you need to make copies and end up at a copier that is less expensive.

5. Making edits after first run is not as frustrating as it could be, especially if the zine has a “gritty” feel and various fonts. I had to make 3 changes and each was easy since I cut up another one and made the edits and copied them.

6. Sometimes big corporations who specialize in copying and printing mass quantities are worth the extra pennies per page. I tried to make copies low budget at first but the machine kept breaking and the paper getting caught. It took me almost 15 min to make 50 copies of one page. Then I went to Staples, added money to my copy card and made 50 copies in less than 5 minutes of all the pages of my zine! It costs more, but it was worth it to save time, have folks there to help, and know what I’m paying for is quality and these services.

7. Text and typography are important to keep in mind especially if you want to reach many folks and make an accessible zine. For example, I knew I had to save some space, and I know my zine has small lettering, so folks who have vision differences will not be able to read my zine as well/quickly as folks who don’t have vision challenges.

8. Make sure to credit folks, especially if you use their artwork and text. I included an acknowledgement page that helped me to also identify folks who were helpful in the process and needed to be included.

9. Keep a master copy for yourself and file it away. Also keep one copy for yourself as well. My zine was not for sale, but if you are selling your zine keeping these makes additional copies useful and helpful.

10. Give yourself credit. It wasn’t until Erika said “plug yourself - you are making it” that I thought to write that I had created the zine.

What are some things that you have learned as you have created your zines? What are some things you’d like to know about zines (for my media makers salon with Aaminah)?

(VIDEO) Balls of Pride: How Can We Use This Form of Youth-Created Media?

cross posted from my RH Reality Check blog

I really adore youth who create media to send messages that are important to them. Rarely do I comment or write about such those that are poorly constructed or have unclear goals. This will be a first. The creators of the video below seem to really be invested and serious about their proposed project. What I'm wondering is: how can I see and find the value in this form of media versus just debunking it and finding the "wrong?"

This video was introduced to me when a friend shared it on her social networking site. It had several comments shortly after posting and I knew I had to check the video out. We have both worked at GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and are familiar with the goals and work of the organization. Needless to say, when I watched this video I was just as surprised and confused as many of her colleagues.

This video was sent to GLAADs attention via their twitter account when Jacob Sempler, Copywriter at the Miami Art School, sent it to them. Sempler is an art student who created this with two other classmates, Matilda Kahl the art director who is at Miami Art School and Emil Tilsmann the art director who is at the New School of Design/Parsons, for a class project. I want to be clear this is not an official video by GLAAD, it is a student project submitted to GLAAD.

The video is called "Balls of Pride" and seems to be focusing on heterosexual men (I'm including trans men who identify as heterosexual because the focus is on "gay men," and I recognize that the creators may not considered trans men or their sexual orientations in creating this video) and how they can show their "pro-gay" support/ideas/etc. through their girlfriends. The description by the creators reads:

“Straight men avoid publicly stating that they’re pro-gay for various reasons. Our idea is to have their girlfriends do it for them. That makes them pro-gay and unquestionably straight at the same time.”

The creators state in the video that "research" they found (which was by interviewing 2 men on the street who the creators may have known) is what led them to understand that many heterosexual men are "pro gay" but don't know how to talk or speak about it. Their goal is to do this through their girlfriends, have them announce their "pro-gay" ideologies while also affirming their heterosexuality so there is no confusion if they are gay or not.

I'm not sure how long this video will remain up, so apologies in advance for that! I’m also going to let you choose if this is appropriate to watch at work, there are no inappropriate terms or language used. However, I will share that the images and conversations around the “Balls of Pride” does center on wordplay for testicles. There is even a “wall of balls” they believe they can create that will demonstrate an increase in support via facebook.

See what I mean? There’s so much good here, but there is also so much wrong here as well. It’s so layered. I completely appreciate their attempts and their vision. I also really appreciate that they believed so much in their project that they were shameless in promoting it via social media and networking. It is that kind of drive that I adore in many young people.

At the same time I see how this form of media is a misplaced attempt to create a community of people who openly support the human rights of all people. There is still a fear of people thinking others may believe they are gay and this is what the main problem being a member of that community? This is at the heart of the issues. There’s so much more here to unpack, from using a partner to do this, focusing on genitals without recognition of the social construction of sex, and finding/using our voices to promote social justice without recognizing the ways we perpetuate certain types of oppression.

It's important to me to also address how some may react with laughter and see this as comical. I'm not a fan of continuing to laugh at this piece of media, I admit it did make me laugh a few times and the wordplay was juvenile in a way that reminds me why I love to teach sex ed. However, having a sense of humor and using it appropriately to create media that can result in some form of social or community change is a skill that not everyone has. Often such humor can be effective, but when done poorly or in bad taste it can lead to all sorts of challenges, ridicule of the target population, and even physical pain for some who may be harmed.

I share this in hopes that it may promote some form of discussion either here or in the spaces we are occupying. This may be a useful tool to begin conversations about media, media literacy and media justice with many youth, but also among ourselves.

Media Making: Snail Mail

cross posted from my Media Justice column

I love sending and receiving mail. This week I canceled class for the entire week (we only had on day of class but I gave that day off as a gift to my students) because I knew I needed some self-care. One of the things on my list of things to get done because I want and enjoy doing them, versus because I have to do them, is send the people I love and care for mail.

Now, when I write mail, I mean snail mail, mail that you have to put a stamp on, or walk to the post office, stand in line to get stamped, and put in the mailbox. Mail that you have to wait until the person receives it to know it arrived. It’s a form of art for me, a form of sending a message that someone doesn’t know is coming, or if they do, they have no idea when it will arrive!

Think about the last time you got a letter in the mail. How did it make you feel? I’m not talking a bill, or a reminder of some sort, or a menu from a restaurant, or a credit card application. I mean a letter, something that someone addressed to you and wrote a message in that they wanted just you to see. It’s thoughtful and it really is a way to make people feel special.

I know when I had my birthday I was really less than impressed when people sent me Facebook messages instead of sending me cards, especially when they had my mailing address! Perhaps this is me being old(er) but I really do think there is nothing like a tangible card that you can save and keep for as long as you like to remember that someone thought of you.

It was an amazing feeling when I realized I was not alone in my joy of sending mail. My homegirl Erika Lopez wrote in her first novel Flaming Iguanas this about mail:

I just wish people would write back for a few minutes and 32 cents.

I don’t think they truly understand the joy of writing a letter on cool paper, putting it in an envelope, and address it in a funky way that challenges postal workers. The stamp validates the whole thing somehow, and whew!-Putting it in the mailbox and hearing that blue metal flap swing shut is just about the prettiest sound in the natural world. /The universal sound of closure. And a canceled stamp is just about the prettiest sight. It’s almost love and sometimes it really is love. (Unless it’s a val-u pak of coupons.) It means someone thought of you for more than the fifteen seconds it took to dial your number and leave the message for you to call them back.

Plus mail is such a good deal.

Page 118.

When I read this I thought “exactly!” There is still so much truth to this. Some of my favorite parts about sending mail are to be able to pick a stamp. There are several stamps that I love, for example the love stamps with the King and Queen of Hearts where you can put two Kings or two Queens for the same gender loving couple in your lives. I also love the Black Cinema stamps and the set of Abstract Expressionists stamps.

Then I love finding my wax seal and getting a long match and watching the seal drip on the edge of the envelope and putting my stamp with my initial in it and seeing the wax spread. I’ve been really proud of some of the mail I’ve created and sent. It really is a dying art form and I want to encourage you all to think about sending some mail sometime soon, even if it’s to people you talk to every day.

Recently, I taught myself how to make pop-up cards simply by watching a YouTube video. I made my first pop-up card and it was a hit! I’m working on two more right now, and you’d be surprised how easy they are to create! Not only that, but people really appreciate handmade cards, especially when they are different from 2-dimensional cards but most especially when they are personalized. Here’s the video that I learned from:



When I shared with friends that I was considering writing this column today on snail mail they laughed at me. The same people who love receiving mail from me, laughed at this form of media. I started to wonder what that is about. What is it about being thought of in such a way that makes people feel uncomfortable but brings them a sense of being special? I think it’s our society that does not always allow us to value the people we love and adore in the ways that make us feel joy as well. All of the consumerism, the big sales on tangible items, and the commercialization of many holidays seem to also play a role in this outcome. This idea that we need to show someone you love them by giving them something you bought, versus something you made. But it doesn’t have to be like that all the time.

Here’s some of the mail I’ve sent to friends that really makes me happy. Many of these cards were less than $1 to create. It did take some time, but what I needed was a newspaper or magazine (they give these away for free during rush hour in NYC usually), scissors and some tape and/or glue. I often cut up magazines and collect pieces of art from them or words and phrases to save for different mail I’ll send in the future. I usually keep them in envelopes and even if the only card I have is a holiday card from years ago, I can make a collage on the front. Here’s the first pop-up card I made (the people pop-up as do the balloons which move when move the card slightly):

Sometimes I make postcards if I have a ton of tape and make a collage and then tape it all around to laminate it and send. The more I wrote about all the forms of mail I send, the more I realize maybe this is really a dying art form, a dying form of media.

Here’s a postcard I made and even added a bit of grittiness by coloring my fingertips and putting my fingerprints on the card:

Giving really is a gift that we give to ourselves and to others. There’s no reason to wait for special days or occasions to give ourselves and the people we care for gifts. I encourage you all to send some mail the “old fashioned” way. Make a ritual out of the process and savor it and sit back and wait until the recipient has thanked you. It will be unlike any other form of thanks, I promise!