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A zine of questionable haircut advice :)

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by Anne Boyer

Carta Monir via Bluesky

"Announcing my new website, blood.video

"Nothing on this website is illegal. Nothing on this website is unethical. Despite the fact that these videos and photos were created enthusiastically and consensually, I can't process transactions or make money from any media on this website using any standard online payment processing. The only way I can get other people's eyes on my work is to give it away for free. That's the state of the internet and credit card companies right now.

Neko Case | Calling Cards

[“Early Learning about Lesbian Battering

My process of understanding began soon after I came out in 1975. My lover and I began searching for a community of other lesbians outside of our small city. This search took us to many women's gatherings. Often there were group discussions about lesbian relationships. Frequently, these focused on alcoholism and sexual dysfunction as causes for troubled relationships. There were not even innuendoes of violence in these discussions, only the implications of very serious discord. We did not want to believe that there was violence. I did not apply the lessons I had learned as a woman battered in the early 70's to the kind of control and power issues about which we were hearing.

Our ignorance persisted despite the fact that we began to organize a shelter for battered women in conjunction with a group of straight women in our town. We were so clear about violence as a mechanism for control and domination of heterosexual women. We did not make the connection necessary to recognize the violence in lesbian relationships.

However, during my second year, my lover left to go to Boston and pursue a post-graduate degree. I became lonely, and knowing no other way of contacting lesbians, I began to go to the local gay bars. There seemed to be a script that violence was tolerated in bars. On almost every occasion that I went and stayed until closing, there was an episode of violence, sometimes very minor, but at other times very frightening. I began to conclude that violence was a ritual of “bar dykes" who acted out when they were at bars. I did not think of the violence being played out at home.

I saw a lot of property damage and public humiliation. Yet, I saw each assault as a discrete and independent incident. I had no sense that the victims of assault were terrorized and controlled as I had been as a battered woman.

Nonetheless, my naiveté and misconception soon ended. The week of New Year's, 1978, I sheltered a battered lesbian. As I listened to her story unfold, I heard how her partner had beaten up all of her women lovers since coming out. The community had done nothing. It never warned women about Kim. It never intervened to stop her violent rampages. It shunned the victim. It blamed the battered lesbian for the excruciating abuse imposed upon her.

It was at this time that I began to make connections between my experience as a battered woman and the experience of battered lesbians. I decided to extend myself to lesbian victims for support and safety planning. A number of dykes came to me for support and clarification. Often they had been deserted by friends, who seemingly avoided them because of their “weakness."

Soon I was asked to intervene to confront batterers legally to confront the batterer- to name the violence, to demand a cessation of the violence and to insist that the batterer have no contact with the victim. In this capacity, I advised the batterer that the victim was prepared to follow through with civil or criminal prosecution absent voluntary compliance. In fact, I assisted one woman in obtaining a civil protection order against her lover.

However, the lesbian community was not pleased with this process of accountability. They preferred to believe that the violence only occurred on Saturday nights and was something that the community could contain.”]