Gina Fournier

Child Witch

Summer of 1975. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released. Elton John’s Philadelphia Freedom manned the top of the Billboard Charts.  Michigander Gerald Ford was president, succeeding Watergate- disgraced Richard Nixon. My favorite jeans were vertically striped in white, yellow, green and brown. 

It wasn’t Levittown, but it was similar.  Livonia was a once new-ring suburb of Detroit, where I was born.  Our little burg was called Devonaire Woods and carpeted with post WWII brick ranch homes. All were designed and built alike: three bedrooms, one bath, living room, kitchen and basement.  If kids visited someone else’s house, you didn’t need to ask where the bathroom was.

Continue reading “Gina Fournier”

Angelina Pacholczak

A Queer Feminist Ethics of Eros 

A Chapbook of Feminist Poems 

The following works inspired this chapbook of poems: Transforming Carceral Logics: 10 reasons to Dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex Through Queer/Trans Analysis and Action by S. Lamble, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action by Audre Lorde, Are the Lips a Grave? by Lynne Huffer, Educating a Women: A Feminist Agenda by bell hooks, and Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (“Towards a New Consciousness“) by Gloria Anzaldúa.

Continue reading “Angelina Pacholczak”

Jessica Lowell Mason and Melissa Bennett Speak at Williamsville Board of Education Meeting on District Gender Policies: October 2021

My sister, MITA Co-founder Melissa Bennett, and I spoke together at a Williamsville School District Board of Education Meeting, in October 2021, in support of two gender-inclusive policies that were being voted on by the district’s BOE at the time. One was Policy 7554: Student Gender Identity, a policy aimed at inaugurating and declaring publicly and in writing the Williamsville School District’s promise to “[foster] a safe and supporting learning environment for all students, free from discrimination and harassment on the basis of sex, gender, gender identity, gender non-conformity, and gender expression.” The policy also promises that the District “will assess and address the specific needs of individual students on a case-by-case basis.” The second policy, Policy 5634: Gender Neutral Single-Occupancy Bathrooms promises that the District is “committed to creating and maintaining an including education and work environment” and “will ensure that all single-occupancy bathroom facilities are designated as gender neutral.”

Continue reading “Jessica Lowell Mason and Melissa Bennett Speak at Williamsville Board of Education Meeting on District Gender Policies: October 2021”

N/A OPARAH

Sell a bit

If You are reading this it is because I have

—————————————————————

                                    Imagined

                                                            and for that

I am not sorry Continue reading “N/A OPARAH”

The Therapist and The Two Realities of Power

There is a difference between a ‘fabricative realist’ (one who invents a reality for the purpose of manipulating or holding control over another) and a ‘deluded realist’ (one who believes in the reality that a person with more power convinces them to believe).

Neither fabricative realism nor deluded realism is realist realism: it is a situational realism that forms between two parties in a relationship that is built on a significant power differential, a power differential primarily based on access to information.

A perfect example of this might be found in the traditional therapist-client relationship. Continue reading “The Therapist and The Two Realities of Power”

Tanja Aho

Mental Health Resources (Sorted Alphabetically)

For the month of February, I offer you a selection of websites/blogs that have been extremely helpful to me to learn about the ways in which oppression & mental health come together. In order not to be too overwhelming, I have chosen five different writers/pages, but of course there are many, many more! Take them as great places to start, but by no means the only places to look. Continue reading “Tanja Aho”

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