feminist blogs

Anyone who has ever visited my home knows I keep a wide variety of reading materials in every room. Especially notable is the towering, leaning stack of various publications I pile on the back of the toilet. Probably not the best place to store things, for the sake of preservation, but it serves a useful purpose.

Whenever I get a new publication, I add it to the stack. Occasionally the stack will topple over (monk calls this a magalanche!) and reordering occurs in the restacking...and perhaps a little weeding out.

So it was that one day I chanced upon a zine of unknown origin atop the stack. I sat down to read it, and was engrossed in the world of a traveling, organic farming, witty conversation having woman named Amie. And all of her stick-people creations.

Now, I am not sure if I picked this up on a random zine-buying excursion...or maybe long ago. I didn't know if this was one that wormed its way out of my vintage zine collection, or perhaps I picked it up a couple of years ago at the small press conference. Maybe it was one of the lovelies in the surprise package sent to me by friends in New York, or perhaps it was sent in hopeful trade for one of the zines I have long since ceased publishing. There was no date. No context, really, other than the activities of the characters, and no connection to my life, other than absolute fascination.

So, I sent an email to zinestress and asked if there were more. I had issue 2, I think. I wanted to know what became of Amie and her band of random interesting friends. Amie was kind enough to write back, so I sent her some money for all of her back issues, as well as the forthcoming issue 8.

So it is that I now have the complete resale collection. It's really an amazingly simple story, but so wonderful. Amie has a way of picking the most important snippets out of conversations to weave an entire novel out of scant dialog. You really get to know the characters, and to understand their expressions, even though they are stick people. hahaha. She's truly a gifted storytelling, plus...it doesn't hurt that she has led a very interesting and diverse life - working at a carnival and on an organic farm. Living on a boat for awhile. But even still, it's the way she interacts with the people around her in every situation she is in that really makes the story special. You get the feeling that Amie could be the checker at a supermarket and still manage to extract the joy of living from the people she encounters.

It's truly a wonderful read, and I recommend them highly. If you want to order your very own copies of Resale zine, you can email Amie at: handwrittenisbetter at yahoo dot com. She'll give you the scoop on how much and how to get them. :)

It has been an interesting weekend. Aside from a midnight movie on Friday, I have been focusing on doing art and cleaning the house and preparing for Coley's birthday party next week. I even canceled a date in part because I just don't want to be bothered with time constraints (and in part because, if I were to be bothered with them, the time constraint being suggested was wholly uninteresting to me, but that's another post altogether...one that I am trynig to restrain myself from writing, to be honest.)

At any rate, a little while ago, I brought in some laundry and was folding it on my bed when I noticed a tiny little jumping spider. He must've taken up residence in the laundry while it was out on the line. He leapt impossibly far to land on my laptop, and sat there, seeming to observe me as I went about my laundry folding, casting sidelong glances between the spider and the stupid self-help video I for some reason chose to watch from Netflix. And the spider started to build a web! Right in front of my eyes!

Well, needless to say, I quickly lost ALL interest in the video and watched the spider, instead. I giggled as he jumped cutely from the plastic tub on my little bedside table to the frame of the canvas that was leaning against the wall. Covering my mouth so as not to accidentally blow him to spider kingdom come with my exhalations of delight. I tried to even take a little video of him, but he was so tiny and my focusing skills are still embarrassingly inadequate, so I doubt it turned out well. And anyway, he seemed to have some degree of stage fright, because when I whipped out the camera all construction ceased and he just hung there on the end of a strand, twisting and looking, I am sure, like a tiny little booger on the end of a string through the lens of my camera. Oh well, I guess some things are best observed directly. I mean, I could probably rent a zillion videos made by professional documentarians and videographers that would depict spiderweb building, but how often to I get to observe it in my very own house?

So I guess I watched him building his web for about half an hour before he seemed to take a break and I lost interest in waiting for him to do something interesting again. The thought of sharing my bedroom with my spider friend is not thrilling to me, but I can't bring myself to remove him. I'm sure he'll vacate on his own at some point.

The cool thing is that later, when I had all but forgotten about my little 8-legged friend, I was reading the new issue of King Cat Comics and Stories, and John P had a couple of different comics in which he became so absorbed in observing life around him that, for that time, those little details were all that mattered. The first one depicted him squatting down to watch ants, without words save the last frame which contained a thought balloon of John saying "Nothing matters except tis anthill."

It's something I am really trying to put into practice, and can be a good exercise for everything from making sure you are fully present with people or just fully present to experience in general. It works for listening to silly kids' stories, observing bees and bugs in a bush, marking the miracle of clouds and birds in the sky, sex, productive conversation, and communing with spiders.

I dunno. I've never been a huge fan of the idea of meditation or journeying inward for the sake of being inside myself. I find that I spend far too much time there anyway, and I get distracted from experiencing things by tending to return there for safety. Instead, I think it's nice to be fully outside of myself for a change. Not thinking about what came before or what comes next, but just enjoying what is in front of me.

Later, I was thinking about how this applied to art. About how artists take those tiny moments...or my favorite artists do, anyway...and make them neverending. I guess, the flip side is that some artists can take huge concepts and distill them down into something digestible. I like that, too. But right now, it seems like distilling things down oversimplifies things. I'd rather appreciate fleeting moments and tiny things. I'd rather that nothing matter except this anthill.

And I'm so thankful that there are people in this world like John P to remind me of that. :) <3

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Now playing: Beauty Pill - the cigarette girl from the future
via FoxyTunes

The latest issue is on spinsterhood so I'm gonna have to get myself a hard copy for keepers. And not just coz I'm quoted in it either.

Check it out. Also, if you know where to find a copy in SF let me know, otherwise I'll order it online.

(or, "White Girl Learns a Thing or Two About a Thing or Two!")

Ask and ye shall receive. So many many many "a-ha!" moments:

A Preview of Coming Attractions

After awhile, you'll start to notice you're seeing things you never saw before, perhaps couldn't see before. Things that made no sense to you even just a few months back, suddenly make too much sense. Where before you saw legitimate complaints against OVERSENSITIVITY and PARANOIA and JEALOUSY and PETTY DIVISIVENESS, you now see an order and a method. But the order is all out of whack and the method is brutal and graceless. The order constrains what you would see free, and the method is only used to punish whatever, or whoever, threatens the order.

It's Imperative!

No, the big issues on their blogs revolve around preserving only what they already have and getting more for themselves, they really could care less if you are out in the cold looking in. Oh sure, sometimes they talk about poverty, or women in India, or immigrants in America; but look at the framing. Almost every topic leads back to how it affects them, it's not really about the people they are using. If they don't center it on the middle class white woman, someone (usually several) will do it in the comments. Even on our blogs, we have white people show up wanting us to reassure them that they are good people. That is tiring for those with little to keep propping up those with much. Figure out another way to work on your self esteem, like maybe doing something to make a difference, instead of whining that you don't mean to be racist. I much prefer the ones I usually get, if they ask anything, instead of asking me to tell them that they are good people, they ask, Am I doing something wrong? What should I be doing? But I have seen this on other POC blogs and expect it as I continue blogging.

An Open Letter to Feminists of the Paler Persuasion

And lastly, it is the fact I hate when people refuse to speak out against such violence, refuse even to utter a whispered “that’s wrong,” because that’s placing some arbitrary prescriptive value on another person’s LIFE. Everyone’s life is worth the time to try to save it or at least to make it bearable. And in this case, I don’t see many people even aiming for that luxury. I don’t know if helping this cause will get you into the higher tier of super famous feministy feminism of feminine virtue, but it might bring some of these families back together. I don’t know how high the praise and appreciation will be, but I’m sure that some small children will be grateful to see their mothers again. I don’t know how you’ll fit that on your resume, but I do hope that after you work for this cause, you realize that doing good is its own reward.

But those immigrants are taking jobs away from worthy Americans

People don't put themselves at dire physical peril to come to the US because they love doing menial work for a pittance. They do it because they have to. And maybe, just maybe, we'd have a reason to complain if the US wasn't complicit in exploiting people overseas.

The White Lens

You tell me "White" is a political construction, and I agree. but it is one that has not served me well. And if you are apparently of European American descent, than it is one that has served you well.

Let's begin there.

Definition of Terms (Chapter 1)

COLORBLIND: Being COLORBLIND means you get to be WHITE and see everyone else as WHITE. However this doesn't cancel out. Being WHITE (remember) means you are the Decider. So when you are COLORBLIND and see everyone as WHITE, that doesn't mean they get to be Deciders, too. It means you get to be Decider (as is entailed in being WHITE), and it means you get to treat everyone else as if they, too, are trying to be Deciders—which, as a WHITE person, really pisses you off. But since you are COLORBLIND, you only get nasty when their Decider bumps into yours. Otherwise, we're all cool. Being COLORBLIND may seem a contradiction, but as you can see, it is very convenient. (Another small bonus of this type of being COLORBLIND is that you can still match your socks and are allowed to drive, unlike the "old" type of "colorblind" people.)

I'd like to thank the academe

Or that they'd expend more time storming someone who calls them "special interest groups" than keeping people who shed light in the dark corners of the world.

Anti-racism, race traitors, and whiteness.

White guilt is not a useful emotion. It makes us focus on shame and embarrassment, and it makes us feel yucky, and it doesn't usually prompt us to anti-racist work. So we sit there, and we either feel guilty, or we conquer that guilt by 1) insisting that the racism isn't occurring, or 2) shifting the focus away from ourselves by focusing on other people's racism.

More thoughts on racism

3. In the context of U.S. society, the system of advantage clearly operates to benefit Whites as a group. However, it is assumed that racism, like other forms of oppression, hurts members of the privileged group as well as those targeted by racism. While the impact of racism on Whites is clearly different from its impact on people of color, racism has negative ramifications for everyone. For example, some White students might remember the pain of having lost important relationships because Black friends were not allowed to visit their homes. Others may express sadness at having been denied access to a broad range of experiences because of social segregation. These individuals often attribute the discomfort or fear they now experience in racially mixed settings to the cultural limitations of their youth.

here's some white privilege for you

When I call or show up to inquire about an apartment, and I'm told it's already rented, I do not wonder if I am being lied to. I believe others are telling me the truth regarding housing availability, because:

I speak standard US English without a foreign accent.
I have an anglo name.
I do not have brown skin.

books and randomness

I don't mean white people should hate themselves for having pale skin, for something we were born with. I think we white people should sometimes hate ourselves for what we do, or don't do, in the world, for the choices we make about that white skin. In other words, we should hate whiteness and be accountable for our own complicity with whiteness. We live in a white-supremacist society and benefit from white privilege. We should hate that fact, and if we haven't done enough to change that world, well...

The Skin of My Soul [intermission]

So what do I say about someone like this? Someone who walks around wavin' tha WHITEPROGRESSIVE flag and then when he gets a chance, smacks the Brown™ in the face with it? Blames us for holding back social progress on these issues? I think "racist" doesn't do it. I don't even think the word begins to describe this attitude and behavior. I would reach into my Vulgar® bag and just say "asshole," but that doesn't get at it either. Then we are just throwing verbal punches back and forth, and truth be told, I don't care for the verbal kind. If we goan throw down, I'd rather do it in the flesh. Out here, we are supposed to be exchanging ideas. And fighting won't make anything better for anyone, anyway. Hell, after all this, I am still willing to have a real conversation with any of these people, if they feel themselves capable of approaching with some willingness and humility. Otherwise, go on with ya bad self. May you find the world you deserve.

*blank stares*

If you want to understand where young women are coming from, and you want to know what one of us (because I am a fucking young woman, no matter how much it hurts you to understand that) thinks about the world, know that from my perspective we live existences where we move from struck nerve to struck nerve. And each struck nerve is like a brick wall upon which we’re required to smash ourselves. We’re taught the lessons of necessity at an early age. Whether it’s creating a garden and selling vegetables to white town members at 12 (something my grandmother had to do), whether it’s tossing out a mandatory “I love you” to a needy yet merciless parent, whether it’s discovering that the really fun activity you want to do is off-limits because you’re not a boy or you don’t have the money or your parents/friends/relatives don’t like it or you’re not pretty/smart/fast/determined/woman enough to take it on. We’re taught to smash ourselves against it, harden our skins, and move on. When it happens again, the nerves underneath that skin are destroyed. Our brains have no recognition of the pain, so we can keep walking like robots to our next wall, hit it without compunction, and keep going.

hurt feelings

because there’s no better way for a young black feminist to drive up her stat counter than by becoming the butt of the blogosphere’s racism, is there? because that’s what gets a young black feminist off, isn’t it it–sifting through racist arrogance so that she can get more meaningless hits on a stat counter that misses have the damn visits anyway.

Because it really is a good idea...

How not to be an asshole: a guide for white people/feminists

Here we go again

And in this case, the problem is white feminists coming into POC spaces (that may or may not identify as feminist) and demanding that POC serve up their upset on a platter, in easily digested non-confrontational little pieces.

On blinkers

You know what, everyone? Shut the fuck up. Listen to what fellow feminist bloggers are telling you. They feel marginalised and ignored in a movement whose goal is equality and whose members are quite able to spot a man exercising his privilege at a thousand paces, yet somehow can’t see how a white feminist could be doing the same thing.

A little trip down memory lane

What did we say to the men who'd go off on how rude and uncivil we were? How divisive and unbending we were? How jealous and bitter we were? We told them to deal. We pointed out that dissent doesn't mean we're being rude or uncivil. We called BS on the whole rules of etiquette thing since it was often used to silence dissent and unpopular (read: feminist) opinions while allowing polite sexists to oh-so-politely posts some incredibly misogynist and bigoted trope.

I'm seeing the same dynamic here.

Cut it out.

Can you tell the difference

THERE IS A REASON WOMEN OF COLOR DON’T TRUST YOU OR YOUR MOVEMENT.

Pay attention and some day you’ll figure it out.

a guest post from bfp

In short, women of color are brought up lots and lots of times as a part of the “problem”—but we are patently ignored as “not part of the target audience” when it comes to solutions. If we were “included” in the solution of women not identifying with “feminism”—FFF would be a completely different book and feministing would be a completely different site.

Do Not Legalize Prostitution (via sam)

The recognition is growing around the world that "prostitution," as it is practiced, is not a "willing, sex-for-money, happy-hooker transaction", but almost always, a devastating life-shattering exploitation of the most vulnerable young women and children, by powerful and callous men. There is growing international condemnation of one rather visible and horrific forms of prostitution, the international trafficking of huge numbers of young women, about two million per year, across the world from poor lands to wealthy ones, to be prostituted.[...]

In any reasonable system, the order of retribution should be just the opposite. Pimps (if anyone) should be pursued with relentless effort, much as child pornographers now are, for they are true predators who devastate the lives of vulnerable young people, and cynically profit. The John should pay fines, based on income, and perhaps given some useful information, as with D.W.I. offenders. The prostituted children and women don't need to be arrested or jailed at all, but given a safe place to recover, heal, plan a future, go to school, regain a sense of autonomy, and dignity.

Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone (via Feminist Law Profs)

For decades Hustler, his hate magazine, has been on sale in almost every convenience store in the country. During that time, with each new issue every month he has declared war on women, feminists, people of color, Jews, the disabled, children, and animal rights activists, as well as any other group or individual who disagreed with him. He also constantly targets animals, women in general and ethnic minorities who have not even done anything to provoke his rage. A full generation of males have now been raised on his contempt and he loves it.

Dwayne Tinsley, close personal friend to Flynt, and the creator of the Hustler cartoon "Chester the Molester," which depicted pre-teen girls of all races being molested, was convicted in 1990 of sexually abusing his daughter. When he was released from prison, after serving his time, Flynt hired him back on at Hustler. In February 1996, Hustler publisher Joe Theron was arrested in Britain with 400 videos imported from South Africa, many of them depicting child pornography.

For all this Flynt is being promoted as a free speech hero instead of the greedy, exploitive, racist misogynist he really is. The right to be left alone? The right to be left alone? In his whole life Larry Flynt has never left anyone alone. Flynt has aimed hate speech and harassment against every oppressed groups you can think of. Big man. Big hero. Thanks Duke University, HBO, New York Times and Full Frame Documentary Festival!

Untitled...

This past Saturday I had a happening that I am struggling to deal with.

A 14 year old young woman I know told me that she had been raped.

Kind of sexist? KIND OF??!!!

From the Chicago Tribune:
Store manager Allison Worrell and I agree that it's kind of sexist to call the packet of female overnight necessities the "Shame on You Kit" ($28) while the guy's version of similar items is labeled "Clean Getaway Kit" ($30). Each contains undies, condoms, toothbrush and such and -- this is a nice touch -- a little blank "leave behind note" to fill in with some sweet nothings.

A "Shame on you" kit? Obviously any woman who needs one of these is having a dirty, dirty affair, but the guy who needs one of these is obviously a stud who's having a fun weekend fling.

MA lege to women: “Nice try, but you’re still just meat envelopes to us!”

That’s right. Dude pretends to be sleeping woman’s boyfriend, thus tricking her into servicing him, but because she didn’t say no, it’s not rape.

[...]

21st century America: where fraud is a crime, and rape is a crime, unless you do’em both at the same time; then the Manly Rapist Protection Society throws a gala ball in your honor, you go on the talk show circuit, star in a porn film, and some famous celebrity deli names a wiener after you.

My Mother

She sounded, in other words, like a woman feminism failed. And this is the thing: Feminism does fail those women who expect they are going to see results in this lifetime. Feminism doesn't always offer results in this lifetime. And in that sense, and that sense only, it is a little like religion: You don't get the results in this life. You get them in your daughter's life (if you are lucky) or in your granddaughter's life, or, for those of us who are either childless or child-free, you and yours don't get them at all--you have only the vague hope of "future generations."

"Future generations" will benefit because you stood up when you should have sat down. "Future generations" will consider it normal for an analytical, no-nonsense woman like my mother to be CEO of Merrill Lynch; "future generations" will not say, stupidly, "If that's what she wanted, and she had the ability to achieve it, why didn't she?"

Me, I hope "future generations" will understand that the chains you are taught from an early age to wear are the hardest to shake off. Because what my mother wanted and what she chose (you young ones, always with the choice! You have no idea) to do were what the chains of her age permitted her to do--no more, no less. She WANTED, I think, to write, to think, to float ideas, to spend loving hours wandering abstractions--but of none of this did she dare dream. A good Mormon woman puts her family first. And of course she has a family, of course she buries her needs and her wants in a perfect graveyard of service to them, to others, to anyone at all but herself.

Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom from Consequences

All of this new hulaballoo possesses the disturbing air of infomercial: Are you a DJ feeling put upon by the fascist-socialist Left? Did you recently make an off-the-cuff remark using a mixture of words like “whore/ho”, “flied lice”, “wetback”, or “nappy”? Have no fear! With just a few easy steps, you, too, can whine about your right to free speech! Included in this step-by-step guide are the instructions on using big words like “constitutional”, “libertarian” and “Islamo-fascist” to help you sound just like those guys from Law & Order – guaranteed to re-direct the ire of the American public towards the minority you’ve just made offensive remarks against and buy you a pretense at the moral high ground in 30 days, or your money back! This product is not guaranteed to help you keep your lucrative position as ”Morning Radio Talk Show Host”, also known as “Baboon with a Microphone”.

Porn Again (via Feminist Law Profs)

If I had intentionally set out to write an article intended to provoke a backlash that made liberals look like a bunch of leering louts eager to ogle 18-year-old girls and transform society into a deregulated libertarian paradise where low-income women are routinely exploited, I think I could scarcely have come up with a better approach than the Wall Street Journal piece I published on May 4 arguing for raising the age of consent for appearing in pornography to 21. Such a backlash was, perhaps, entirely fitting, given that the topic was a soft-core porn company that has cut deals with major Democratic Party donors and preys mainly on young women in red states, but it was also disappointing in the extreme.

Setting the record straight

Jerry Falwell, if you check yesterday's posts, hated just about everybody. And he thought that that hatred made him morally superior. He hated people who are the scapegoats of society, the people that it's easy to blame for things because they don't have a voice. He hated the different, the misunderstood, and the powerless. And then he stood up and said his hatred was morally superior because those people asked for it, they deserved it. Why? Because they didn't obey his rules. He was so conceited he believed he had a right to tell other poeple how to be and live, and how the One True Way to be a Christian. That way was his way.

Garrison Keillor, the voice of oblivious White Male Privilege

Emphasis mine: what harm does it do me Keillor writes. Why, none at all, Garrison; none at all. No skin off your nose. It’s those of us who aren’t White Men — you know, us hos and nappy-heads and what have you — who’ve got the problem. Some of us are a little tired of living in a culture where women are routinely denigrated and ridiculed.

Disability Blog Carnival #14 - Firsts

Carnival Against Sexual Violence 23

You can download Diana Russell's book FOR FREE over here with kind regards to NoPornNorthHampton for hosting and Genderberg for pointing it out.

The Agenda Behind Duke Hoax Theory

The only proven lie by anyone involved in this case is the lie made by the lacrosse player who ordered dancers for this party. He lied about his identity and he lied about how many people would be at the party and he lied about what type of party it was. But this case proves that it's women who lie. Right.

last note on imus b/c it’s bigger than hip-hop

first, the language of mainstream hip hop cannot be excused under any circumstances. but, this is really a question of diverting attention from imus to hip-hop culture. imus acts as if he is a 8 year old child who heard a bad word in the school yard and innocently repeated it and as such should carry no responsibility. everyone responds and jumps on the bandwagon on blame hip hop and imus in chilling in the background laughing at critics black and white alike who have completely moved the center and have allowed him to blend into the background as just another victim of the hypnotizing trance of hip hop and its predatory tentacles. let’s play history correctly and remind ourselves that the images of black women did not ORIGINATE within hip hop, rather these images originated in scientific discourse and white racism hundreds of years ago and are often punctuated by the capturing and carnavalizing of difference and inferiority most notably with sara baartman (otherwise known as the hottentot venus). as william jelani cobb says

Dispatches From Iraq: The Women’s Story

It's a 48 minute video, but well worth your time.

That NYT Magazine Feature About Pornography

No enthusiastically pro-porn article would be complete without some derogatory reference to Andrea Dworkin of course. And yet in the very next paragraph, the author reveals that a Kink employee’s reaction to one person inflicting pain on another is to yawn. Exposure to a lot of pornography has made him numb to the obvious suffering of another person, just as Andrea Dworkin asserted it would.

more thoughts on white privilege, denial, and responsibility

Some leftover thoughts on the white privilege conference

If you thought getting rapes prosecuted by the state was a difficult process...

You might want to thank your lucky stars you don’t live on a reservation.

The terrorism that dare not speak its name

Had that bomb been found outside a post office or a school, the headlines would have been hysterically running on about ZOMG TERRORISM TERRORISM IS AL QAEDA INVOLVED? And the right-wing warbloggers would be pissing their pants and hyperventilating about profiling Arabs and banning Muslims from public life and dhimmitude and how if they had been there, they’d have stopped it with their concealed carry and their extra-super special powers of righteousness, just like they saw in a movie once and BOMB IRAN! and 9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!!! but they still have better things to do than join the military, but they’ll be happy to go into the woods and hunt Russians and shout WOLVERINES!!

But it’s an abortion clinic, so. Ho-hum.

R.I.P: dignity, shelf bras

You see the catch? It’s not exactly a Catch-22; that catch comes later. This is more of a Catch-23. If you have mammary tissue, you have to cover it up. If you don’t have mammary tissue, you’re obliged to get some, then cover it up. If you don’t get some, you still have to cover it up.

Reader actually asks spinster aunt’s opinion

The fun feminist confuses “empowerment” with the decision to acquiesce. This is understandable; it’s the one actual choice she has in this game: surrender, or stand and fight. She doesn’t have to be Candida Royalle to recognize that if she chooses the latter all she’ll get for her trouble is ridicule, hostility, suspicion, and the threat of bodily harm.

Whereas the rewards for surrender to male porn culture are not inconsiderable: social acceptance, male approval, little psuedo-privileges that accrue according to the degree of one’s conformity, and of course the enormous relief at not having to fight it anymore. The if-you-can’t-beatem-joinem gambit has enjoyed millennia of popularity for good reason. It gives the appearance of the shortest and easiest route to life’s rich pageant. Too bad that, once they get there, chicks are only eligible for the women’s auxiliary.

Radio Hosts Suspended for Anti-Asian “Flied Lice” Prank

What really gets my goat about this story is that it received so little press despite the segment being aired only a week following Don Imus’ firing. Further, there is so little media backlash against these shock jocks despite the best efforts of Asian American advocacy groups. Finally, what was with Sean Hannity arguing that JV & Elvis couldn’t be racist against Asian Americans because JV has a Korean wife and they aired in San Francisco?

For your entertainment (via the comments at Heart's)

Talking about his upcoming film Hostel II at a press junket recently, the young director Eli Roth couldn't contain his enthusiasm for the poster devised by the film's marketing team - a close-up of some sinewy, gleaming boar meat. "Any time people see women in a horror film," he noted, "they say, 'Oh, these girls are just pieces of meat.' And, literally, in Hostel Part II, that's exactly what they are. They are the bait, they are the meat, they are the grist for the mill. So I thought it was actually a really smart poster ... and really, really disgusting! I love it."

Girls Deaths Ends The Investigation Into Their Rapes

Lately, when people talk about a rape case ruining someones life, it's the alleged rapist they are talking about. Because of the concern over "the trauma of being accused," the recommendation is frequently to make the system significantly more hostile to girls and women who report being raped. (And yes, that recommendation is usually gendered.)

But this case shows that the process of reporting can be traumatic enough to not only ruin a victim's life, but to contribute to the victim committing suicide. Yet those who are focused only on alleged rapists want to subject girls and women to even more trauma. Sure, they will give lip service to supporting all real rape victims, but girl's like this are merely collateral damage in those people's proposals for change.

Project Safe Childhood

I wait for the day that they take down the real meat and potatoes in this awful soup - the heads of the child porn rings, the suits, the guys in the starched shirts and stiff collars who are the ones that you just can’t believe rape kids. Those are the ones to really get. Those that look just like Warren Jeffs (above), President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). See how he looks kind of nice, maybe sweet, maybe a little good looking (but not really), that’s what they look like. “President of the Priesthood.” The child rapist that showed up at my door looked very similar to him. Take a look at the creeps that they catch in that video above too. Yuk.

Anticipating the O'Beirners...

I resent the hell out of anyone who didn’t know that women make less than men fordoing the same shit!

I resent the Kate O’Beirners for their over paying bullshit spewing jobs that afford them the kind of income to support a state of denial about the gender wage gap.

Oh, dear, purity....balls

Oh, yeah, and this guy is whining about the sexualized culture, but it's clear he's focused on talking---and that's it. Nobody gets to disagree and people are supposed to jump when he says what he wants to happen. This guy boasts about how his daughter had her first kiss----at the altar----at the age of twenty two. Anybody want to bet how ghastly that wedding night was? Should we have a divorce pool? This guy is so creepy talking around the subject of the his daughters' sex lives. They're pretty uninterested in boys' sex lives. So what happens? All this pressure gets puts on the girls, while the boys are pretty much let go. And of course Dr. Phil doesn't mention boys at all. Nobody cares what boys do----or whom they do it to. You'd think sex was a female problem and that men don't have sex at all. Or that men have sex with people who aren't girls. And that girls are having sex somehow that doesn't involve men. Basically, how do you 'have' something when it involves another person? Either you're doing it together, or one person is in charge and the other person is unwilling. By focusing on girls alone, these fathers are saying that these girls are just their hymens, that's all they value them for, while ignoring boys gives them license to do whatever they want with, I guess, girls whose fathers don't emotionally blackmail them into 'purity pledges.' Are girls who are 'impure' worth anything? A father's time, affection, attention? How come it's not mothers? Would mothers subvert the whole process by talking about men and how weird they are? How does the girl feel when this thing that she's been told over and over again is the most important thing to her dad is finally gone? Does that mean she ceases to be important, too?

Sex and stereotypes: What’s wrong with individualist fluffy-feminism

The look-at-me priority of little black dress feminism obscures the central tenets of the movement - that ALL women are people. That women everywhere in the world deserve to be free of rape, abuse, hardship, reproductive control and oppression. Not just smooth-legged cheery L’Oreal-infested twentysomethings dancing their asses off in American nightclubs.

Why merry rapists are flocking to Britain

Speaking of child rapists who freely roam the countryside, have you Brits wondered why it is that every time you turn around lately, some perv in your neighborhood is throwing an acquittal party?

Because rape convictions in the UK have plummeted to Taliban-level depths, that’s why! They’ve sunk from a 1977 high of 32% to a low of just 5.6% in 2007. Why? Hold on to your hats. It’s because nobody believes the women.

Why don't women report rape?

Anecdotal stories I know include the following: being completely disbelieved by police; being sent to the hospital to be probed at by unfeeling staff who take her clothing for evidence and refuse to give her anything other than a hospital robe to wear back home; being questioned by police almost as if she were the one who committed a crime; after reporting, being stalked by her rapist and receiving little help from police; being mocked or accused of lying by “friends”, neighbors and family, particularly if the rapist is a family member or someone well-liked in the community; and being threatened by the rapist and his friends. Famous rape cases show this drama being played out as well: William Kennedy Smith’s accuser having every mental problem she’s ever had analyzed in the press; Michael Tyson’s accuser being branded a liar while he received a fund-raising show of support from the black community, including the churches; the woman in the Duke rape case being called a slut, a liar, having her personal information published by a prominent columnist who called upon people to attack her in public; and so on.

FAQ:What can I do for feminism?

Woman Murdered Before She Could Testify Against Her Alleged Rapist

What's almost as tragic as this woman's death is the fact that the criminal justice system failed to protect her after she was threatened. There have been many cases across the country where the murder victim has received death threats and the person sending the threats has been allowed to remain at large until they made their threats a reality.

When rape victims come forward they face two risks -- additional violence or public disbelief or both. We have to do better.

Shithead Attorney (via abyss2hope)

LeRoy Rose is an attorney that gives shitheads a bad name. LeRoy Rose believes that 12 year old girls can seduce 32 year old men. That they can rape them. He should be ashamed for arguing this. He is an absolute disgrace to defense attorneys everywhere. Here's a snippet from the article.[...]

"Hasmar will testify that the girl was the instigator and that he told her they shouldn't be doing this," Rose told the jury, adding later that the jury should ask themselves, "Who raped who? Who fondled who? Who attacked who?"

A new era of slave catchers

As the dust of the New Bedford raid's aftermath settles, of course, we would expect to see the requisite "he-said/she said" game about who said what to whom before the whole ugly thing went down. The fact is, what happened last week at the Michael Bianco sweatshop was police brutality and racial profiling in a new era of slave catchers. Read the opinion piece in the Boston Banner, Boston's black newspaper.

Imagine the same violence against a group of undocumented workers from Ireland? Do you think the cries from women -- while being hunted and shackled -- about the safety their kids would be so easily dismissed?

Please Help the Stranded Bedford Immigrant Children (via fauxreal)

FROM THE MIRA COALITION: There are between 150 and 200 niños (children) separated from their parents as a result of the March 6, 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement's raid on workers at a defense contractor in New Bedford, Massachusetts. MIRA members, staff, allies, families, neighbors and friends are doing their best to care for these children, but with limited resources.

Soft-core Sexism (via fauxreal)

The two most powerful symbols of slavery in Black Snake Moan are writ large on Rae’s body: the chains around her waist and the rebel flag on her T-shirt. These images evoke the specter of white wrongdoing but also reframe her enslavement–which is supposed to be OK because Lazarus is black and Rae is white, and we all know what that means in the South. What makes the movie truly offensive is that it employs race to peddle its brand of misogyny… By not exploring–but exploiting–race and gender, Brewer’s camera leaves the viewer free to savor the bared body of a victim of sexual abuse and rape tied to a radiator… The most memorable time a woman imprisoned a man against his will on the silver screen, it was an aptly titled horror flick called Misery.

The betrayal of ability

So here's some YouTube video of a Brazilian Candid-Camera-type show where pranks are pulled on unsuspecting passersby. This five-and-a-half minute clip shows a man in a clunky manual wheelchair at the corner of a busy urban intersection. After enlisting someone to help push him across the street, the man stages a tumble out of his chair in the middle of the crosswalk. People rush to help, dragging him fully across the street and attempting to help him into the chair again. At that point the man stands up on his own, revealing that the whole drama and his disability are a prank. Over and over again, throughout the clip, these tricked pedestrians turn violent with the actor, and several times he runs to avoid real injury and assault.

The way male and female behavior is described

This is intereesting. Women get described disparagingly, as 'out-of-control' and moral menaces: men even get described compassionately and respectfully for their prodigious drug habits![...]

Boys will be boys, and girls will be called skags, sluts, bad mothers, and 'wanting attention'----which is close to saying they're asking for it.

The megalopatriarchy

The New York Times Magazine story about post-traumatic stress disorder in women in combat is 16 screens long, but it can be boiled down to this: Women in combat are likely to be sexually assaulted by their peers, and to get PTSD as a result, and the military pretty much turns a blind eye.

Fighting the system

When I talked about how the system of global feudalism is so huge, and how it destroys people, I got a lot of strong reactions. While a lot of commenters got what I was saying, a lot didn't. It either sounded to them like I was going to pillory them for shopping at Wal-Mart, or trash them for not doing enough political action.

Neither was true--what tends to stop up the works in this movement is the obsession with one or the other. I'm a big fan of organizing and political action, myself, but I do think it's helpful to keep ourselves appraised of where the things we buy come from, and at what cost. These small individual consumer choices won't change the world, but it will help to keep us focused, and keep us mindful of what's at stake. I also think it could go a long way toward eroding some of our sense of entitlement.

Loving on Asian Foods #1

In response to this article, reader Lisa suggested that someone start a series of discussions on the health benefits of traditional Asian cuisine. I think it’s a great idea and volunteer to start with this in what I hope will be a series of posts detailing the health benefits of non-Americanized Asian foods.

Since I am culturally Chinese, I thought I would start with some of my favourite dishes and beverages. The intention is to combat the confusion of Americanized Chinese fast food with traditional Chinese food and to illustrate how eating such foods can contribute towards improved health.

Disability Carnival #11

10th Erase Racism Carnival

wow. i haven't done one of these posts in ages and ages.

A note on estrangement (mom, you should read this one. made me think of you and marguerite.)

My mother and I are estranged.

Most people do not hear that sort of thing very well. They struggle to fit it into their view of the world.

“I’m so sorry to hear that!”

Why?

I’m not.

Not continuing a relationship with my mother was the best thing for me. I do not miss the relationship I let go of. What I miss is the fantasy relationship…the mother myth of what could have been. I no longer delude myself about what should have been...everything happens as it should and for a reason.

The Rape of Sabrine...

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

[...]

Humanitarian organizations are warning that three Iraqi women are to be executed next month. The women are Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad. They are being accused of 'terrorism', i.e. having ties to the Iraqi resistance. It could mean they are relatives of people suspected of being in the resistance. Or it could mean they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them gave birth in the prison. I wonder what kind of torture they've endured. Let no one say Iraqi women didn't get at least SOME equality under the American occupation- we are now equally as likely to get executed.

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

So-called sisters

while women like these promote a view of radfems that promotes mens' sexist fears about feminists so that they look better, they're just using sexism for their own benefit. Here's some examples:

"I love pink and sparkly things, tee hee! I'm a bad feminist!"

"I love men! I'm a bad feminist!"

"You know, other feminists hate me because I love love love men and I suck cock whenever I get the chance! Look! There's one now!"

"I love feminine things! I'm a bad feminist!"

You notice a trend here? At least the Ann Coulter-wannabees are intellectually honest: they're conservatives, they're wrong, that's it. You can avoid them. I can say with reasonable certainty, though, that the so-called sisters kissing male ass---like there's a shortage of that around----are peddling a view of feminists that was created by and for men. That view of feminists is one that's as old as feminisms, who have been ridiculed for, most of all, taking themselves seriously. As human beings. Mess with that, and you're not a sister, and I really don't care about your precious little feelings at all. If Ann Coulter came to me after getting beaten up by her boyfriend or whatever, I'd be bound to help her, but if she turned around and called me a feminazi---read this for what I think she'd be like. I'd expect that. Really, the standards for Ann Coulter are not high: she's a scumbag. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't help a woman in the sort of distress that a sexist society inflicts, no matter who she is. When it's women who are supposedly on my side doing it, they should know better. If they're mouthing the same crap that the anti-feminists do, then why should I have any patience?

Liberal DudeWatch ‘07: their forbidden love for Ann Coulter

Of course Coulter — a maggot chewing on the rotting corpse of human enlightenment — pretty much cries out for lefty derision. Sadly, because such a large percentage of the dudes who vituperate on political blogs are 22, in a case like this one rather expects juvenile ad hominem attacks, more or less out the wazoo. But what really puts my entrails in a knot is that the most offensive invective these bright young minds can contrive springs universally, not just from misogyny, but from what can only be construed as a depraved delight in misogyny.

Occasionally Conversations with my Man Are Instructive:

"No, I've figured out that you guys don't like that, and I'm trying not to do that, I swear, but the way you express things sometimes, isn't it just making it easier for men to get defensive?"

"No," I said firmly, "What we aren't doing is taking care of them. Nurturing them. Putting their feelings first. Looking out for them, making things safe for them. We aren't making them the center. We're talking just the way we'd talk, the way we do talk, when y'all aren't around."

"And you know sometimes that gets ugly," I continued, "but the thing to do then is to remember: Everything else IS centered around y'all. Everything else--you guys got the talk radio to take care of you, the ESPN, the CNN, the New York Times, the advertising industry--you can't bask in all that adoration day in and day out and then pitch a fit because a handful of blogs on the internet don't recognize your awesomeness. Or I mean, you can pitch a fit, go right ahead, but it's not going to end with me bringing you your binky and kissing your forehead. It's going to end with my foot in your ass."

Time to Shoot ‘Political Correctness’ in the Head

I mean, of course, use of the term “political correctness” as a slur that any thinking person should bother giving a shit about, not the idea behind it. The idea behind “being politically correct” is actually this wild concept called “showing consideration for the feelings of others,” sometimes abbreviated to “being sensitive,” and also colloquially known as “not being an asshole.”