leger

Organizing Principles

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:36:10 -0400

It’s been about 10 years since Riley and I started making art and art spaces together. Today I put together an extended essay about what I have learned, and some of the principles are guiding us going forward.

It’s long enough that I broke it up into pages. Perhaps it will be of interest to you if you are trying to make an art community of your own?

Table of Contents

Organizing Principles
The Aformentioned Principles
Principle #2
Principle #3
Principle #4
Principle #5
Principle #6

Alternatively, you can read the whole thing on Google Docs

dearhussy: the Hussy is cursed with competence, which makes day trading on the erotic market of...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:34:56 -0400

dearhussy:

the Hussy is cursed with competence, which makes day trading on the erotic market of butch labor so frustrating

like “just get it together or get out of my way” is unsexy & emasculating; and yet, so is watching you flail and pretending i don’t notice

a 90s queercore dude came over today and said i hurt his butch feelings with a strained laugh that indicated he was trying to shrug it off but i actually did hurt his butch feelings a little bit

The hussy is legit meaner than like anyone I have ever met, you guys.

p.s. I have zero followers.

topsidepress: Can you predict the winners of this year’s Lambda...

Thu, 30 May 2013 23:48:50 -0400

topsidepress:

Can you predict the winners of this year’s Lambda Literary Awards?

The ballot with the most points will win bragging rights and these cool prizes:
—1 copy of every book published by Topside Press for the 12 months
—a $25 gift certificate to BGSQD, a queer bookstore in NYC.

ENTER YOUR BALLOT HERE

topsidepress: For those of you lucky enough to not live in New...

Mon, 27 May 2013 02:14:39 -0400

topsidepress:

For those of you lucky enough to not live in New York over the last few days, you may have missed that a local “inclusive” queer party booked JD Samson, of MEN, who is playing MichFest 2013 and is violating the boycott. When their audience, the queers of Brooklyn, starting posting concerned messages and asking them to cancel the performance, the organizers briefly argued back, and then finally, in the eleventh hour, relented and cancelled on JD. (We, the Topside folks, were literally about to start printing flyers to take to protest the party when it was finally announced that JD was out.)

However, the organizers have stayed true to their “free speech” motif and have allowed pretty much every transphobic person to post whatever they wanted on the Facebook wall for the party and for the event.

After the announcement that they had done the right thing and cancelled the performance of JD Samson, vitriole spewed, and the above conversation took place. A post on the event page turned particularly ugly, and eventually someone named Chelsea P.R. Menth told trans women who wanted JD out to “burn.” She later deleted many of her comments, realizing perhaps that they contained hate speech above and beyond what had been thrown at trans women, on this page at least, before.

We’re posting them so that these are not lost, because they are part of the conversation, because this is what we are up against, in our own communities, among our “allies” and at our “parties.” Note that the managers of this page did not intervene, did not delete this, did not say, NO, ON OUR PAGE, THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE; ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET YOU CAN TELL TRANS WOMEN TO BURN, BUT NOT HERE. The organizers displayed zero leadership, and in fact, they displayed crappier politics than a corporate social media shill would have been able to deploy in a time of crisis.

MichFest is a cancer in our community that we need to deal with in a real way, today, for good, so that the healing can even hope to begin. Lisa Vogel saying it is OK to discriminate against trans women in Hart, MI creates a climate in the US where it is OK to tell trans women to burn. Anyone who thinks differently is unbelievably naive.

Oh, BTW, dear reader, this event was called, THEY QUEEN, and was created to celebrate the genderqueer/third gender. Et tu, safe space?

NB: Additionally, you can read a conversation between Cyd Nova and Julie Blair about this mess, here.

aaaand another part: http://oi40.tinypic.com/nnjty1.jpg

topsidepress: For those of you lucky enough to not live in New...

Mon, 27 May 2013 02:12:09 -0400

topsidepress:

For those of you lucky enough to not live in New York over the last few days, you may have missed that a local “inclusive” queer party booked JD Samson, of MEN, who is playing MichFest 2013 and is violating the boycott. When their audience, the queers of Brooklyn, starting posting concerned messages and asking them to cancel the performance, the organizers briefly argued back, and then finally, in the eleventh hour, relented and cancelled on JD. (We, the Topside folks, were literally about to start printing flyers to take to protest the party when it was finally announced that JD was out.)

However, the organizers have stayed true to their “free speech” motif and have allowed pretty much every transphobic person to post whatever they wanted on the Facebook wall for the party and for the event.

After the announcement that they had done the right thing and cancelled the performance of JD Samson, vitriole spewed, and the above conversation took place. A post on the event page turned particularly ugly, and eventually someone named Chelsea P.R. Menth told trans women who wanted JD out to “burn.” She later deleted many of her comments, realizing perhaps that they contained hate speech above and beyond what had been thrown at trans women, on this page at least, before.

We’re posting them so that these are not lost, because they are part of the conversation, because this is what we are up against, in our own communities, among our “allies” and at our “parties.” Note that the managers of this page did not intervene, did not delete this, did not say, NO, ON OUR PAGE, THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE; ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET YOU CAN TELL TRANS WOMEN TO BURN, BUT NOT HERE. The organizers displayed zero leadership, and in fact, they displayed crappier politics than a corporate social media shill would have been able to deploy in a time of crisis.

MichFest is a cancer in our community that we need to deal with in a real way, today, for good, so that the healing can even hope to begin. Lisa Vogel saying it is OK to discriminate against trans women in Hart, MI creates a climate in the US where it is OK to tell trans women to burn. Anyone who thinks differently is unbelievably naive.

Oh, BTW, dear reader, this event was called, THEY QUEEN, and was created to celebrate the genderqueer/third gender. Et tu, safe space?

NB: Additionally, you can read a conversation between Cyd Nova and Julie Blair about this mess, here.

And, here’s a further part of the conversation, archived by another person: http://oi41.tinypic.com/30muvdv.jpg

topsidepress: Excellent conversation in the Transgender Fiction...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 02:48:13 -0400

topsidepress:

Excellent conversation in the Transgender Fiction panel today at The Rainbow Book Fair in New York City, with panelists Imogen Binnie, Ryka Aoki, Terrence Diamond, and Tom Léger, as well as invaluable kibitzing from Red Durkin and Annie Danger.

Incidentally, these are also the only photos ever captured of trans men listening thoughtfully to what a trans woman is saying.

topsidepress: Here’s the audio feed from the Imogen Binnie...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:58:46 -0400

topsidepress:

Here’s the audio feed from the Imogen Binnie reading at Pegasus last night in Berkeley. (Imogen’s part starts at minute 33)

Huge thank you to Berkeley Community Media for recording this for those of us who couldn’t be there!
Follow them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeTV28

Imogen’s reading style adds like 100% to the book itself. Can’t wait for the NYC release.

topsidepress: Imogen Binnie’s reading tonight in Berkeley at...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 23:07:19 -0400

topsidepress:

Imogen Binnie’s reading tonight in Berkeley at Pegasus Books is being livestreamed! It is at 7:30pm pacific, so that’s 10:30pm eastern.

NEW LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR01Bi_nCOQ

My Website

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:53:30 -0400

My Website:

this is a link to my main website