Le Tigre: Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and JD Samson
These are the ladies that taught me how to be a lady. In the many variations of who a lady can be.
In Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre On Tour!, Kathleen Hanna talks about how Le Tigre’s electroclash music, choreography, and style was vulnerable. And it was dorky, fun, and passionate. And very, very political. They were an unapologetic feminist queer band composed of women musicians, and the film smartly weaves this into the narrative. There are rants and celebration — but no preaching or rockstar crazy — and lots of good music and spirit.
Watching the film made me miss the band terrible. (Le Tigre broke up in 2005.) And it also made me realize just how personal and inspiring their music is to me as a queer feminist. But it was especially inspiring when I was younger.
Le Tigre’s songs explore the personal being political, the suppression of feminist herstories, about being a lady band and female artists, about the harsh realities of the world, about sexism and homophobia and hate. But at the same time, to me, their message was always hopefully. Their message was always: you are not alone; we hear you.
All three members — Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and JD Samson — talk in different ways about how they pushed the envelope and did something that mattered to so many people. Whether it was feminism, gender performance, or just the simple act of being three women in a band, Le Tigre’s legacy lives on. They were a radical act.
As a documentary and a band movie, Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre On Tour! was insightful, heartwarming, and entertaining. The live performances were mixed in well with the interviews, both while on their final tour and post-Le Tigre. I highly recommend this film to any Le Tigre fan or anyone interested in feminist music.
If nothing else, the scene where Fateman (on a dare from the others) gets her picture taken with Slipknot is worth watching the entire film.
• What Superhero Comics Look Like A great little article breaking down how Osborn #3 by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios is scripted and put together art-wise, also how it applies to the very best of current comic books.
3) Everybody wanted Uhura to kick some ass this time around. But they couldn’t figure out how to have her kick ass in a teeny minidress, without needing a lot of strategically placed lens flare. The writers spent two months trying to figure out a plot reason why Uhura might have to put on some pants, or maybe some leggings, for part of the movie. What if they go to a planet of leg-biting monsters, and she has to put some protective leg coverings on? Or maybe Spock shows her a special Vulcan ritual, in which practitioners must wear pants as a sign of devotion to pure logic?
• Why I’m Not Speaking at PAX East 2011. In case you haven’t been reading, Penny Arcade started selling rape joke t-shirts. Pulled the “it’s just a joke” and then took them down when everyone got really mad. Failboat. Especially for a company that runs a con where they try to make it safe for women.
GeekGirlCon
• Auctions!. Check out GeekGirlCon’s geeky auctions. All proceeds go to support GeekGirlCon.
Politics
• Why Female Politicians Are More Effective. Of course, we are. We have to be 2 and 1/2 times better than any man at our “non-traditional” jobs in order to prove ourselves and prove that women can do these things.
• A fizzy ocean on Enceladus. Not only is this ocean underground, it’s also fizzy like soda pop. How awesome is that!
• Scientists working to grow meat in labs. Now this is when science starts to scare me. I saw this episode of Better Off Ted, and the meat tasted like despair.
I am now gleefully happy that “Firefly” got canceled. Not that I wasn’t before, but now? I can almost forgive FOX for canceling all those TV shows if it means that Inara was never raped. Also, TV, can you stop having the women with sexuality be raped or otherwise punished for having it while pretending to be edgy for having women with ‘unconventional’ sexualities?
• BP Disaster was “Avoidable” The commission reports find that it was due to failure on part of all the companies. Which means lazy companies caused on of the worst environmental disasters we’ve seen. And they aren’t properly cleaning it up.
• Women and Comics Another letter to publishers and marketers how they are missing a huge part of the world: women.
• Wonder Woman TV project officially dead I’m going to be over here crying. Not even television super producer David E. Kelley could get a Wonder Woman project off the ground.
Today is National Coming Out Day. National Coming Out Day celebrates visibility for LGBTTQQA people.
I’ve been out of the closet as bisexual for over 10 years now. But like any queer person, can tell you that coming out never really ends, especially in a society where you’re straight until proven otherwise.
Sadly, this year has been marked with several deaths of bullied and harassed queer people (or assumed queer people). While, I’m glad that these stories are actually making the news — compared to be a hidden secret — I hope that some day, there will be no deaths to report. Sex columnist and fellow Seattleite Dan Savage has created the It Gets Better project, which is where anyone can upload a video speaking about their experiences and how as an adult, life gets better for queer people. Because it does. If one young person (or really anyone of any age) knows he/she/zi is not alone, then these videos have worked. There is hope; there is help; and there is community. You are not alone.
• I went to Social Media Breakfast on Tuesday to see Kira Wampler from Ant’s Eye View/Intuit speak. Here were a couple the tips I tweeted:
Find the sexy about your business, which may not be your product itself.
Don’t stop at just listening to your customers. Do something too.
Employees needs guard rails for rules of online engagement. Want to do right by the company.
Fandom
• Runaways Movie Casting Breakdown Racebending brings a summary of the casting for the Runaways movie, and the actor requirements don’t even mention the character being Japanese-America. Instead she’s “Uniquely beautiful, nurturing but guarded.” Worth noting that most casting breakdowns are horribly stereotypical, even if the end result of a film is not. However, after the complete whitewashing of The Last Airbender…
Links that I enjoyed and shared around the web. Take a gander.
Economy
• Times report: The real mortgage deadbeats are the rich. Why does it not surprise me that even in the Great Recession, the rich keep getting richer by hiring their legal team to take advantage of all the loopholes, including ones that are supposed to be helping the middle and working classes.
Tweeting in all-caps, this size-XXXXXXL superhero fights for social justice and breaks down the gender binary–all the while looking “smashing” in purple shorts with a big smile on his face.