“A Cast of Beautiful People”:

Bette’s Failed Empathy and Intersectional Representation in The L Word

Sula Malina

December 13^th, 2014

“The point of intersectional analysis is not to find ‘several identities under one’…This would reinscribe the fragmented, additive model of oppression and essentialize specific social identities. Instead the point is to analyse the differential ways by which social divisions are concretely enmeshed and constructed by each other and how they relate to political and subjective constructions of identities”

For my intersectionality paper I'm going to be writing about the intersecions of sexuality, class, race and sartorial expression. By using the website Qwear http://www.qwearfashion.com/  (a queer fashion blog) and this Autostraddle article which documents six queer women's styles and fashion inspirations: http://www.autostraddle.com/he-saidwe-said-in-the-city-of-brotherly-love-267820/ I want to examine how expressions of queer identity are stratified and legitimized in different ways depending on one's intersecting identities.

(Adding this now, as I forgot to post it last week during the zine preparations.)

Here's a copy of a drawing that Charlene made for me! While I was drawing a portrait of her, she drew a portrait of me.

Voila, a copy of what I wrote for my zine contribution!

(This photo isn't 100% true to life, but it's the best I've been able to get)

Charlene is a villager at Camphill Village Kimberton, and was my partner during our trip there. She is a vivacious, cheerful, and fierce person who loves her work, and loves sharing her experiences with people. She's been at Camphill for over 40 years, and knows the place much better than many of the administrators. I did my best to capture this and other things in my portrait of her!

Here's the post of my self-portrait:

I haven't yet been able to figure out how to rotate it correctly, as it shows up normally on my system viewer.

(The original image for the 'Zine. I attempted to represent as many identities as possible in as little visual space as possible, combining influences from pop-art and anatomical drawings. )

Written Work

This was a huge part of what motivated me to look into the conditions of the factories that most retailers use to manufacture their clothing items. So, check it out if you'd like to. Pay attention to the bottom right corner of the screen, and see the massive disparity between what the retailers earn and the factory workers earn.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/apr/bangladesh-shirt-on-your-back

(When you open this link, you have to scroll down a bit and click on "ENTER")

I was so impressed by the range and thoughtfulness of your presentations on your expanded contact zones, and look forward to hearing how each of you might carry this work forward. I also noted an article in yesterday's New York Times--Peru is Indignant After Greenpeace Makes its Mark On Ancient Site-- that seemed to me an emblematic of a conflict between "identity" and "environment," and thought you might all be interested in the controversy. Just sayin'--you can do this, too: as you come across related events during the months to come, please use this site to archive them.