feminism

By Bob Johnson [XBIZ]

SAN FRANCISCO — Indie feminist pornographer Courtney Trouble announced that she will be managing adult talent through LittlePinkBook.biz.

The agency is poised to fill the need for ethical, professional casting assistance for unique, authentic performers - including but not limited to alternative, BDSM, fetish, queer, lesbian, and trans performers, according to the company.

“I have been told consistently that one of my greatest traits as a pornographer is my ability to cast the right person for the right project. Cultivating healthy working relationships with my performers has always been my biggest goal in this industry, and moving forward to promote these artists seems like the next logical step,” Trouble said.

Initial clients include 2009’s Feminist Porn Awards "Heartthrob of the Year," Dylan Ryan and fetish model Sarah Lee Sinful. Both are performers in Trouble’s Reel Queer Productions/Good Releasing films, and her own company NoFauxxx.com.

The company will also provide casting assistance to both mainstream and indie production companies through a database of over 100 established and aspiring performers.

“There has been a lot of great work done in female-friendly filmmaking in the past year, but no work done to connect the indie, “feminist,” and “queer” genres to the mainstream. I hope to achieve a working relationship between the indie and the mainstream by being a resource for casting and ethical business practices. It’s time to take this groundbreaking work behind the scenes into performer relations!,” Trouble said.

For more information contact courtney@littlepinkbook.biz.

Today

marks the 99Th anniversary of the first International Women's Day celebration.

This celebration a bitter sweet reminder of how far women's-and human's rights - have come, but how incredibly far each cause has to go. The political climate in America, no matter how degrading and absurdly disgusting to women, is no where near as terrible as that in other parts of the world. Social and political injustices are not the only issues women , children and other subordinated groups face. Health and access to fair health services are one of the most dire issues of my generation, but what are we doing about that?

But I guess I wont get caught up in the negatives. Today more women are going to college, working, raising families as "heads of the household" than ever before. Women can obtain a divorce, degree, buy a house or a plane ticket without a husband's or "protector"'s consent . Women are world leaders, teachers , business owners and athletes. The movement has certainly come a long way.

Happy International Women's Day

LaPrincipessa | Twitter: @sophiabiabia | sophiabiabia@gmail.com

(Posted at Women Undefined)

I was in highschool during the turn of the millennium, it was a time when a classic-put down for my age group had suddenly become lost. Slut was a word that sounded powerful, that one might cut up from a magazine to proudly paste onto her decoupaged notebook, a word she might see emblazoned in rhinestones on a baby-tee, and stand in awe of. This was also a time of many hook-ups for my peers, we didn’t date, we “talked” which usually meant a few phone calls and some heavy petting. In college, it went from talking upfront to fucking upfront and it seemed everyone I knew had swapped fluids with one and other at some point. People still shacked up of course, but it was usually after a hook-up rather than picking- her-up for dinner and a movie.

Long dead are rules and etiquette and courting. The hook-up culture of one night whirlwinds, easy-to-get antibiotics and readily available contraception is in full swinging swing. And aside from the Christian Right, the lot of us are backing it with an enthusiastic ass-slap. Thanks to feminism, the aforementioned contraceptives, divorce forgoing taboo and later and later marriages all of this can happen. Pro-sex feminism has given us an era where the term “slut” is an endearing word among friends.

But with the old rules abolished, and no new ones in place are we progressing? Or as Charlotte Allen suggests in her article, The New Dating Game, have we simply removed the rules and de-evolutionized, entering back into the Paleolithic age of dating. Where, as she writes “the men drag the women by their hair back to the cave, and the women love every minute of it.”

Back in September I wrote a post called When Did Being Called a Feminist Become an Insult? I didn’t really have an answer at the time, I mostly wrote about my personal musings on the questions, but after reading the first Chapter of Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth I have or rather she has an answer to the question. It might be pretty obvious to some, but she wrote about it so well, that I’m here to share it with you all:

The caricature of the Ugly Feminist was resurrected to dog the steps of the women’s movement. The caricature is unoriginal; it was coined to ridicule the feminists of the nineteenth century. Lucy Stone herself, who supporters saw as “a prototype of womanly grace… fresh and fair as the morning,” was derided by detractors with “the usual report” about Victorian feminists: “a big masculine woman, wearing boots, smoking a cigar, swearing like a trooper.” As Betty Friedan put it presciently in 1960, even before the savage revamping of that old caricature: “The unpleasant image of feminists today resembles less the feminists themselves than the image fostered by the interests who so bitterly opposed the vote for women in state after state.” Thirty years on, her conclusion is more true than ever: That resurrected caricature, which sought to punish women for their public acts by going after their private sense of self, became a paradigm for new limits placed on aspiring women everywhere. After the women’s movement’s second wave, the beauty myth was perfected to checkmate power at every level in individual women’s lives.

This book is AWESOME. I’ve only read chapter one and it has pretty much blown me away. You should all get your hands on a copy from somewhere. I borrowed mine from my neighbor. Seek it out! Spread the word!

Crossposted from Cuntlove.

They said slavery was outlawed hundreds of years ago, yet  human trafficking and slavery are one of America and the entire world's most underreported crises. Millions, literally millions, of girls and children are trafficked in America and abroad each year.

In another grim reminder of how this crisis affects every aspect of our society, ESPN reported former NBA All-star Alvin Robertson is wanted on sex trafficking charges.

SAN ANTONIO -- Former NBA All-Star Alvin Robertson faces sexual assault of a child and sex trafficking charges alleging he was among seven people who kidnapped a 14-year-old girl who was forced into prostitution and made to dance at a strip club, authorities said Friday.

Robertson was taken into custody Friday in Bentonville, Ark., said Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy Ino Badillo. Robertson lives in San Antonio.

The arrest comes as part of an investigation that began last April when a 14-year-old girl waved down a police cruiser in Corpus Christi and told authorities she had been abducted from San Antonio, Badillo said. She told police she was driven around the city and forced to have sex with various men before being driven to Corpus Christi and forced to dance at a strip club.

There are times, when words simply escape me- this is one of them. For more information and ways to help, visit Captivedaughters.org.

LaPrincipessa | twitter: @sophiabiabia | sophiabiabia@gmail.com

(Posted at Women Undefined)

Reporting a crime that did not happen is in and of itself a crime in the United States. The basic premise being, don't make shit up. I won't get too deep into the American prison system and all of its injustices, but headlines like this make me want to scream in frustration.

"Biurny Peguero, Fake Rape Victim, Gets Up To 3 Years For Sending Innocent Man To Prison"

In how many ways is this headline offensive and damaging? I don't have enough fingers and toes to count them all, no doubt there are hundreds of ways this one sentence causes tremendous trouble.

First and foremost the content of the article above which the headline is placed is important in order to establish context.

Biurny Peguero, 27, pleaded guilty in December to perjury, admitting she made up the September 2005 incident that unjustly put construction worker William McCaffrey in jail and prison for nearly four years. A judge overturned his rape conviction in December, with new DNA evidence also playing a role.

Oh double standards. Just when I was enjoying the Olympics and reveling in my country's nationalism, celebration and pride you had to come along and ruin it! Damn you! Damn you to hell!

So here is the run down , Canadian Women's Hockey wins the gold. They celebrate with alcohol and cigars , gasp, in public.

The time honored tradition of celebrating a sports championship with alcohol and cigars was alive and well last night after the Canadian women's team defeated the U.S. 2-0 to win their third straight Olympic gold medal. It was a huge party on the ice at Canada Hockey Place and with them winning a gold medal on home soil against their biggest and only rival, you'd have to excuse the Canadian women for being just a tad excited.

Male Hockey teams celebrate publicly in this manner as well, but that is beside the point, because they are MEN ( que deep, husky, baritone voice). When a body acts outside of what is expected of them, it suddenly becomes a huge negative, especially when considering gender norms. A senior IOC official says, "I don't think it's a good promotion of sport values", but what I really think she means is "it's a good promotion of [gender] values" because really, the only tradition this hockey team isn't celebrating , is that of traditional women.

And that is the real reason the team is now under investigation.

LaPrincipessa | Twitter: @sophiabiabia | sophiabiabia@gmail.com

(Posted at Women Undefined)

Requirements: Stories should be between 2,000 and 7,000 words and in English. No reprints or material posted online. No multiple or simultaneous submissions. Stories should be submitted in standard manuscript format as an attached RTF file.

Where to submit: Stories should be emailed to zubaan.antho@gmail.com. Hardcopy submissions will be ignored. Include the story-title and author name(s) in the email’s subject line. For example:

Submission: “Name of Story.” by A. N. Author

Reading period: February 14, 2010 - June 01, 2010.

Publication date: February, 2011

Payment: Rs. 1000 (~$25) plus a contributor copy.

What we are looking for: Stories that use the Ramayana in an essential and innovative way. As the anthology title suggests, the stories need to have an speculative element. We take speculative fiction to include sub-genres like magic realism, science-fiction, fantasy, new weird, slipstream, interstitial, etc.

We’ve mentioned that the Ramayana should be used in an “essential and innovative way”. By “essential,” we mean that the stories should be about the Ramayana, and not say, about the Iraq war. That being said, the Iraq war is a perfectly acceptable setting for a story about the Ramayana. Perhaps one useful test of “essential” is this: if the Ramayana had never been written, would your story lose its point?

“Innovative” means that your story manages to surprise us. Be bold. Courageous. We've read a lot of tame retellings. There are a great many versions of the Ramayana-- over three hundred according to one authoritative count-- and people have been telling and retelling this story for millennia, so surprise is a scarce resource. On the other hand, this is a constraint uniquely suited to the speculative imagination.

We are especially interested in stories with strong female characters and feminist perspectives. The Ramayana has generally emphasized male voices; it would be interesting to hear from other perspectives.

Finally, it is worth emphasizing that we care deeply about how a story is told. We’re looking for literary stories. Given a choice between an idea-rich but poorly-told story and a well-told but not-so-brilliant story, we’ll pick the well-told one. Of course, we are looking for stories with both virtues: brilliant words and brilliant ideas. The Ramayana deserves nothing less.

[Insert thesis on social trickle down affects derived from gender-oppressive legislation and dangerous ramifications of this type of legal precedent] 

The Utah House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to miscarry if it can be proved she displayed "reckless endangerment", "careless misconduct" or GASP, "ignoring medical advice". The bill is presently awaiting the signature of the Governor.

You can view the actual bill here.

Rachel Larris of RealityCheck.org weighs in:

A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor's signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and make induced abortion a crime in some instances.

Entertainment Weekly reports that the former half term governer of Alaska's daughter, Bristol Palin, is now going to be an actress. She now can add to her list of prestigious life achievements (not including college or higher learning) that already includes pro -"life" advocate, paid spokes woman on behalf of anti abortion groups, and official political wedge of her mother, the job of actress when she guest stars on ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

She'll be "acting" as herself on the show, in an episode that features a night/concert for teen mothers.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s oldest daughter Bristol Palin will make a cameo as herself on ABC Family’s teen mom drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The episode, in which she’ll appear as one of Amy’s friends at a music program for teen mothers, will air this summer during the hit show’s third season.

I personally love mass media that depicts teen-pregnancy and birth/raising of children of teen parents in an idealistic light. Especially shows that portray how easyyy it is to be a teen mom, you know with all the problems of teenagers like boys and friends! The IMPORTANT STUFF.

On a serious note, beyond the guest star spot awarded to Best.Teen.Mom.Ever-Bristol Palin, how damaging are shows like this? What message does it send? Is it worse than any message that teaches young people how to have safe sex ? I think it is clear the implications upon society are very dire and it is unfortunate that a hate/lie spewing young woman is given such a platform.

#mediafail

-LaPrincipessa | twitter: @sophiabiabia | sophiabiabia@gmail.com

(Posted at Women Undefined)