43 min listen
Strange Fruit #51: Racist Halloween Costumes & Butch Queens Up in Pumps
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Oct 26, 2013
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
If you've never been to a ball, you don't know what you're missing - but Dr. Marlon Bailey's book, Butch Queens Up in Pumps, is probably the next best thing. He takes us inside the ballroom scene in Detroit with an ethnography that examines how ball culture redefines ideas about gender, performance, and community. We spoke to Dr. Bailey this week about his work and what drew him to it, and he told us about his first time at a ballroom event and how it challenged all his previous assumptions about black gay culture. In our Juicy Fruit segment, it's Halloween week, and that means a lot of white folks will be out and about in blackface. We talk about what causes people to think that's okay, and why it never is (also check out Ohio University's campaign, We're a Culture, Not a Costume, which comments on the wrong-headedness of using stereotypes as costumes). Elsewhere in cultural misappropriation, American Apparel thought a Voudou-themed window display would be perfect for Halloween. And we also talked about our favorite study of the week: The National Bureau for Economic Research published a paper this week saying first-born children are smarter. With apologies to our younger siblings, the entire Strange Fruit team agrees.
Released:
Oct 26, 2013
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #31: Urmi Basu of New Light India; Kaitlyn Hunt, Statutory Rape & Queer Relationships: Activism runs in Urmi Basu's family; her grandfather was a doctor who set up a school for _dalit_ children (India's untouchable caste) in his own home. Urmi says her family "always challenged everything that's traditional in India." Thirteen years ago, she combined her passion for gender equality and her background and education in social work—along with 10,000 rupees, or $200—to found [New Light India](http://www.newlightindia.org/). New Light is non-profit organization based in the red light district of Calcutta, intended to help victims of sex trafficking and provide healthcare to people living with HIV/AIDS. With an estimated 40,000 new trafficked sex workers in the city each year, it's no small task. But Urmi is a woman of great determination. She was in Louisville recently and she sat down to talk with us about her work, and how sex trafficking in India is part of the larger globa by Strange Fruit