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By Verónica Bayetti Flores • @veroconplatanos • 10 years ago

Feministing Jamz: A femme power playlist to tune out street harassment

This weekend was the first weekend that it felt straight HOT in the northeast. Tropical lady that I am, I can’t get enough of the hot weather, and I was taking full advantage by wearing shorts, my femme shark crop top, ball cap, hoops, and gold high tops. So yeah, I was slaying. But it seems like the first weekend a girl can show some skin is some kind of street harasser holiday. Harassers come out of hibernation mad hungry for exerting their power over you in public, and this weekend was no different.

Femininity is a special kind of target on the streets. Now, I know that more masculine-presenting women and gender non-conforming folks get street harassed plenty too. I was with my more masculine-presenting girl this weekend, and we were both targeted. But femininity is so often conflated with powerlessness, so often painted as inferior, so often the target of street harassment.

So I want to dedicate this playlist to the femmes. To those of us who find power in our femininity – however that may look, in whatever genders and bodies it may live. To those of us who resist the patriarchy in a bold lip, and those whose thickly-lined eyes shoot daggers at the creeps. To those whose bold femininity both gives us life at the same time that it risks it. This is for you. For us. Turn it up.

 

1bfea3e7449eff65a94e2e55a8b7acda-bpfullVerónica believes in the power of femmes.

New York, NY

Verónica Bayetti Flores has spent the last years of her life living and breathing reproductive justice. She has led national policy and movement building work on the intersections of immigrants' rights, health care access, young parenthood, and LGBTQ liberation, and has worked to increase access to contraception and abortion, fought for paid sick leave, and demanded access to safe public space for queer youth of color. In 2008 Verónica obtained her Master’s degree in the Sexuality and Health program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She loves cooking, making art, listening to music, and thinking about the ways art forms traditionally seen as feminine are valued and devalued. In addition to writing for Feministing, she is currently spending most of her time doing policy work to reduce the harms of LGBTQ youth of color's interactions with the police and making sure abortion care is accessible to all regardless of their income.

Verónica is a queer immigrant writer, activist, and rabble-rouser.

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